#inoculation

It’s obviously way riskier than our immunization techniques today, but while 30% of normal cases of smallpox died, only 2% of people variolated died.

I don’t know if this is actually applicable to cats since this was made specifically for smallpox, and I’m not yet sure if there’s any other old methods of inoculation. But yeah. Regardless I think this is really cool :)

Variolation is actually a specific term for a method of inoculation against the variola virus, which causes smallpox! Nowadays, we're able to inoculate people against many diseases, but "early forms" of inoculation were all variolation.

This causes some confusion, because the first vaccine was created from cowpox to FULLY immunize patients against smallpox. The term "vaccinate" even comes from the Latin word for cow (vacca). But these are all terms with distinct meaning.

Variolation: Using infected biological material from a patient with smallpox to inoculate another patient, in the hopes of vaccinating them.

Inoculation: Introducing viruses and/or microorganisms into something else, usually in an attempt to induce immunity. But, you could also inoculate bacteria into a petri dish, or inoculate your dough with yeast.

Vaccination: Inoculation with a vaccine against a disease.

Variolation is a type of inoculation, but not all inoculations are vaccinations. A chickenpox party is an inoculation event; not a vaccination event. Variolation and vaccination are done to immunize patients, and inoculation usually is too unless you're baking something.

(also I'm flexxination against alla youse who've had chickenpox in the past. Couldn't be me I've had ALL my shots. My ass is SAFE from shingles ✨)

Smallpox was actually the only disease that inoculation worked on in ancient times. That's because variola was special. It had two common forms-- Variola Major and Variola Minor. If you HAD to have smallpox, you wanted Minor because it was much less severe than Major. Plus, by inducing the illness, you could make sure the patient was at PEAK health before they went to fight it.

A lot of people actually think that variolation was invented in the 1800s by Edward Jenner (he invented the smallpox vaccine), or get confused about the difference between vaccination and inoculation. The funny truth is actually that Europe was LATE to start practicing variolation-- it only came to England itself in the 1700s, when it had been standard practice for hundreds of years in most of the Old World. Possibly as far back as the Song dynasty.

(philomena cunk voice: variolation was the first technique of its kind in history. except chinese history)

In fact, the Chinese had it down to a process. Identify a case of Variola Minor, dry the scabs for several days to weaken the virus, grind it with some other medicines into a powder, and then pack it in cotton and administer with a silver (antimicrobial) tube up the nostril. Meanwhile, over in England, they'd just slap that shit in an open cut on your hand.

(also also, the practice was probably in Britain before the 1700s. But it was in Wales, so, the English ignored that. variolation was the first technique of its kind in history. except chinese history. and welsh history. and african history. an-)

Anyway, back to cats.

Like I mentioned, there's no disease (to my knowledge) that you can be inoculated for in the same way as smallpox. That said... I think creating some fake diseases would be a VERY fun thing to do.

There's also a HUGE lack of variety in the diseases of canon. Almost every major disease outbreak is simply a respiratory illness-- the only one that actually involved any skin symptoms was the Red Cough of DOTC. Ideally, I'd like to turn coughs from the majority of illnesses into the minority, and generally a deadly minority.

(Some of the types of disease I'm going to make more of; foodborne, waterborne, and zoonotic illnesses. Rabies is eradicated in England, but I do want bats in particular to be carriers of a disease that Vow Cats refer to with a term like "karmic retribution." "Serves-you-right-itis." "Chronic L-Taking Disease.")

So, there's a chance I use inoculation as a method at some point. I might even keep it in my back pocket as a good way to demonstrate how the Wardens* have a specialty for medicine.

A History of Vaccination: Taming the World's Deadliest Diseases

The field of public health was transformed by the introduction of vaccination, from the Latin word “vacca” meaning cow, to guard people against infectious diseases. It was well known that exposure to infectious diseases and surviving them conferred some natural immunity against subsequent outbreaks. Pioneers in the use of vaccinations included Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, and Gaston Ramon, and their work ensured many of the world's deadliest diseases could finally be tamed.

The immune system is the body’s defensive mechanism against bacterial and viral diseases. The immune system will recognize the unique characteristics of a disease called antigens. Antibodies are produced to target the infectious agent, and then T cells are sent to kill the infection. The immune system also remembers previous infections to protect against future infections. Vaccines help train the immune system to effectively react to an infection, thus lessening the severity of the disease. These new protections against lethal diseases greatly reduced child mortality rates, extended life expectancy, and contributed to eradicating smallpox (the first successful attempt to rid humanity of a lethal, infectious disease that previously claimed nearly 30% of infected people).

Early Attempts at Protection

The first known attempts at vaccination emerged from China, probably developed by a Buddhist monk around 1000 CE. Traveling westward toward the Ottoman Empire, the first reports, in the mid-16th century, describe attempts directed at smallpox, which killed half of those who became infected. In those early procedures, the smallpox scabs taken from an infected person were dried and crushed into a powder, which was blown into another person’s nostrils or applied to scratches made in the person’s skin. This was known as variolation or inoculation. Attempts were also occurring in India and Africa.

In March 1718, while living in Constantinople, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), who was married to the English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Edward Wortley Montagu, arranged for her son and daughter to be inoculated against smallpox. This practice used material from the live smallpox virus and was commonly employed as folk medicine. Lady Mary’s brother had died from smallpox, and she herself survived the disease, though she was left with significant scarring. Neither of her children contracted smallpox after inoculation.

The mounting evidence, favorable to inoculation, demonstrated that, under a doctor's guidance, a person was better off being inoculated than catching the disease naturally. By 1721, the practice of inoculation had spread to Europe, but the initial attempts not only caused additional outbreaks but also resulted in a 2-3% death rate of those who were inoculated. Nonetheless, when introduced into children in lesser amounts, the children experienced milder cases, rarely leading to death. The children generally recovered more quickly and developed lifelong immunity to the disease.

Across the Atlantic, similar attempts were made to inoculate the population against a smallpox outbreak. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) successfully inoculated his son and two household slaves during an April 1721 outbreak. Attempts by Mather to promote inoculation to the leading physicians of Boston were met with scorn, except for Zabdiel Boylston (1676-1766), who not only inoculated his own son but also a household slave and the slave’s son. After a few weeks of a mild outbreak of the disease, Boylston inoculated his older son and seven other Bostonians. Despite his successes, Boylston’s practice was still met with scorn and ridicule as some inoculated patients died while others transmitted the disease to the unaffected. Religious objections surfaced claiming smallpox was a righteous punishment from God for folks’ sinfulness. Inoculation was also opposed as unscientific, instead branded as a folk remedy. Nonetheless, opposition slowly diminished as the numbers began to demonstrate a lower death rate among the inoculated versus the non-inoculated. While doctors still could not scientifically prove why inoculation worked, it did. The positive numbers convinced George Washington, in the early years of the American Revolution, to require smallpox inoculation for all of his troops.

An English physician, Edward Jenner (1749-1823), believed that becoming infected with cowpox (an illness transmitted by cattle) offered protection against smallpox. Jenner observed that milkmaids who contracted cowpox from milking cows did not contract smallpox. On May 14, 1796, Jenner’s first attempt at inoculation, performed on 8-year-old James Phipps (1788-1853), was performed using cowpox pus. James contracted cowpox but recovered quickly. Jenner tried the experiment a second time, but this time with smallpox material. James remained unaffected by smallpox even months after the vaccination. Subsequent inoculations with others proved Jenner’s theory.

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THIS was A WARNING FROM THE 1930s…

Link to Andrew Wehrman's Thread