ArtículosJennifer Craig, BSN, MA, Ph.D
February 26, 2010
Somewhere in medical education the idea that smallpox was eradicated by a vaccine took hold in students’ heads and has remained there ever since. Would that more accurate information endure with such persistence? Even physicians who have explored vaccination continue to believe that the injection of pus from a cowpox sore prevented smallpox. For example, Cave and Mitchell, in What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations, on page 10, say, ‘A more scientific approach was used in the late eighteenth century when Edward Jenner, who discovered that inoculating people with the animal disease cowpox made people immune to the deadly human disease smallpox. This was an interesting concept, and fortunately for Jenner it helped save lives …”1 Did they ever ask themselves how the inoculation of pus from a diseased animal could possibly prevent, rather than create, a disease in humans? This article explores the history of smallpox vaccination