Thursday 14 May 2015

throwback thursday - TBT #10

may 14th is the day that the world's first vaccine was given - by Dr.Edward Jenner to an eight year old boy called james phipps. the year was 1796. edward jenner is the father of immunology, and his work paved the way to save millions of lives through preventive medicine.

the word vaccine itself comes from 'vacca', the latin word for cow - based on dr.jenner's research of using cowpox for preventing the occurence of smallpox. it took 200 years though, to eradicate smallpox entirely from the world.



2 comments:

  1. Coming up with the concept of vaccinations is itself a big achievement 100s of years back.

    When the normal thought process would be to just fix the problem than trying to prevent the problem. Equally weird is the concept of letting the problem reside within us so we raise antibodies for the problem from within. Such an amount of trust is bewildering (and equally baffling).

    When the Gulf war happened, there were so many oil wells that were on fire. The Americans did try so many ways of shutting them down but nothing really did the job. Ultimately, they simulated a limited and controlled explosion near the mouth of the Oil wells and it helped eat up all the oxygen around leaving the wells with no oxygen and thereby shutting down the flames.

    Is there a correlation there?

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    Replies
    1. that is interesting - and quite a brilliant way of damage control. yeah, both the scenarios seem quite similar in principle - creating a smaller, controlled 'problem' to tackle the real problem.

      be it baffling or bewildering, at least it has helped humanity so far, and for that we should be thankful !

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