Immunology’s history?

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Immunology dates back to ancient Greece, with evidence of immunity to the plague. The modern history began in the 18th century with Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine. Variolation was used in China and the Ottoman Empire, and later adopted by England. The development of vaccines for other diseases followed, with Louis Pasteur credited with confirming germ theory and developing vaccines for rabies and anthrax. The dissemination of knowledge and training in immunology is considered crucial for civilization, as vaccines save millions of lives each year.

The history of immunology can be traced in written records as far back as the 5th century BC in Greece, where evidence has been collected of individuals who recovered from the plague and were otherwise immune to it afterwards. The Greek historian Thucydides, who lived from 5 to 460 BC, is credited with first documenting this discovery. Several experimental methods of immunizing people were carried out in the history of immunology from this time onwards by cultures in places as remote as China and the Ottoman Empire until the end of the 18th century. The modern history of immunology begins at this point in the 400s when an English physician named Edward Jenner developed the first reliable method of vaccination for smallpox.

The uses of immunology focus on inoculating individuals by implanting a weakened form of a disease into the body to stimulate long-term resistance and the natural immune response to it. In this regard, one of the most widespread and systematic incidences in the history of immunology can be found in 10th century China. Smallpox was a widespread disease in China at the time and a variolation process was used to treat it. The variation refers specifically to the scars that smallpox creates on the skin’s surface, and the Chinese practice involved taking material from smallpox lesions and having healthy people inhale them or implant them under the skin to stimulate the immune response. The same practice was adopted in the 10th Ottoman Empire, but, due to its lack of standardized variolation, it occasionally failed to protect the healthy individual or ended up giving him the disease of smallpox itself.

From the Ottoman Empire, the teaching of immunology was adopted by England through the wife of the English ambassador to the Ottomans, Lady Mary Wortley Montague. She herself was infected with smallpox, but she survived the disease and became an advocate for variolation. In 1718 she ordered doctors to use it to protect her son and later her daughter in the presence of the King of England.

The English Crown later experimented with the trial on prisoners and they survived, so the practice spread throughout the British Isles in the early 1700s and, by 1740, it had crossed the Atlantic and was being used in America. Both Benjamin Jesty, an English farmer, and Edward Jenner, an English scientist, perfected the process in 1774 and 1796 using a cowpox virus that was not harmful to humans. This related virus served to inoculate individuals against smallpox, bringing the history of immunology to a stage where treating people was safe and largely effective.

Types of immunology developed from this point on for other diseases. The history of immunology includes the work in 1875 of Robert Koch, a German country doctor seeking a treatment for tuberculosis. A watershed moment in the history of immunology is considered to be the year 1878, when Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, confirmed theories about the existence of germs and their cause in human diseases. Pasteur is credited with developing vaccines for both rabies and anthrax, as well as perfecting the rapid heating and cooling process to sterilize milk and wine that became known as pasteurization.

Training in immunology and the dissemination of knowledge is considered a key element in the development of civilization, especially in the case of smallpox. Smallpox is known to have devastated human populations as early as 10,000 BC in northeastern Africa, spreading from there to Egypt and China around 1,000 BC and to Japan starting around AD 500. The history of immunology follows the spread of smallpox as it reached the European continent between AD 400 and 600, engulfing the entire continent by AD 1500. During the 1700s, smallpox is believed to have killed at least 400,000 people worldwide.
The history of immunology developments followed directly in the wake of Western civilization which suffered huge losses from widespread diseases such as smallpox and the Black Death. These infectious diseases are believed to have held back progress in society at large. As of 2010, however, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 2,500,000 lives are saved each year through vaccinations. This includes protection from diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus.




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