The new coronavirus has been spreading for 3 years. No matter which remote place you are in, as long as you are willing, you can be injected with the new crown vaccine as soon as possible.
According to China Popular Science Network information, as of July this year, the vaccination rate of Chinese residents reached 89.6%. It can be said that most people have been injected with the new crown vaccine, but it is estimated that few people will consider the logistics behind the vaccine .
In order to ensure the activity of the vaccine, a developed cold chain transportation system is actually needed. Simply put, it requires large freezers or refrigerators, and insulated foam boxes to maintain the low temperature at which the vaccine can survive normally.
Vaccine transportation can be completed relatively easily in the 21st century, but the refrigerator was only invented in 1923, and the first vaccine in human history, the smallpox vaccine, was invented as early as 1796.
So, how did the smallpox vaccine spread to the world step by step in an era without refrigerators?
Actually, the answer may shock many people. relies on children . At that time, children aged 3-9 were used as living containers to gradually spread the vaccine.
However, in order to better understand how it was operated at that time, we need to briefly know what the earliest smallpox vaccine looked like?
Smallpox and smallpox vaccine
As we all know, before the advent of the smallpox vaccine, smallpox was the most terrible disease on earth. It threatened more than 60% of the world's population at that time.
However, a British doctor, Edward Jenner, discovered that milkmaids infected with cowpox never contracted the more deadly form of smallpox.
This gave Jenner inspiration. He found his gardener's son, 8-year-old James Phipps, and deliberately vaccinated the child with cowpox. Then, after little Phipps recovered from the cowpox, he intentionally or unintentionally exposed him to smallpox.
The results were clear. Little Phipps had gained immunity to smallpox from a cowpox infection and had not contracted it from exposure to smallpox.
Since then, the first vaccine in human history has appeared. This vaccine is slurry obtained from the skin pustules of cowpox-infected people. The injection vaccine is to open an opening on the hand or leg of the vaccinated person, put the obtained cowpox slurry into the wound, and let the person be infected with cowpox.
At that time, Jenner may not have imagined that vaccination would be the invention that saved the most human lives in human history, and that no invention or discovery in any other field could compare with it.
Picture: Smallpox virus
Now we know that cowpox is a close relative of smallpox. The antigens of the two are mostly the same. The human body's immune system has a similar process for the two, so people who have been infected with the cowpox virus can also be immune to smallpox.
People at that time had no concept of viruses , and they did not know that the virus was very fragile outside the host. Doctors mainly stored and transferred the vaccine (that is, the slurry in the pustule) in two ways, either by dipping a thin thread or cotton ball in the slurry and drying it, or taking it directly into a glass jar.
Neither method can guarantee the long-term survival of the virus. The wet vaccine cannot even be transported from London to Paris. The dry vaccine will be better, but it is also difficult to transport intercontinentally.
What was urgent at that time was that the New World of America needed this vaccine even more urgently. People at that time racked their brains for this, and finally someone realized it.
Figure: Human migration route and time
Smallpox in the Americas was a catastrophic disaster
About 10,000 years ago, with the end of the last ice age, the world gradually warmed up, sea levels rose causing the Bering Strait to be completely submerged, and the American continent and the Old World began to be geographically isolated for tens of thousands of years .
Smallpox is an old world virus. For us, its fatality rate is about one-third because we have been exposed to it for generations. But for the residents of the American continent, smallpox is a catastrophe.
This is also true. When European colonists brought the virus to the New World, it almost led to the extinction of the indigenous peoples of the entire American continent.
In fact, what really defeated the Inca and Aztec empire was not the first group of malnourished Europeans to land and those rusty thermal weapons , but smallpox.
Unlike the initial ability to assist and defeat the American empire, when European colonists established a foothold in the Americas and engaged in agriculture, smallpox became a key factor in reducing productivity.
Therefore, at that time, bringing vaccines from Europe to the Americas was something that had to be solved. This had nothing to do with humanitarianism , but just because of productivity.
In 1803, when the smallpox vaccine was already prevalent in Europe, the Spanish colonists finally thought of a way. The answer was to send a group of 3-9-year-old orphans to accompany the ship to the American continent as serial cowpox infections.
They called this operation the Royal Charity Vaccine Expedition . The chief physician was 49-year-old Francisco Xavier de Balmis, and the principal of the orphanage accompanied the fleet.
De Balmis grouped the orphans into groups of two, and vaccinated two of them with cowpox from the day of departure. During nine or ten days at sea, the pustules on their arms would mature, and then a doctor on board would puncture the wounds and transfer the fluid to the next two boys in the chain.
After that, the doctor would wait another nine or ten days until the second pair developed mature pustules, then cut those wounds open and transfer the fluid to the third pair of children, and so on.
Obviously, the reason why there are two orphans in a group is because they are worried that someone will not be infected after being vaccinated with cowpox.
People infected with cowpox will be very itchy, but due to the importance of serous fluid, all orphans are not allowed to scratch those pustules. At this time, the principal of the orphanage played a big role.
In addition, the fleet set off on November 30. The coldness and seasickness at sea made these orphans even more homesick, but no one cared about them. The only thing promised to them at that time was to have enough food, to receive education in the New World and to find families to raise them.
When the fleet arrived in what is now Caracas, Venezuela in March 1804, the cowpox in the last group of orphans was just mature. The smallpox vaccine (cowpox) from the Old World was spread to the New World through this orphan relay.
After that, European doctors brought the smallpox vaccine to Asia and other remote places in the same way. However, unlike the first orphan, the vaccine was still an employment relationship, but the carrier was still a child, because children are more likely to be infected with cowpox.
Finally
Now it seems that such a thing is incredible. It is not very reasonable and unethical to let children serve as living containers.
The most important thing is that the transportation at that time was different from what it is now. People needed to cross the ocean, jungle and mountains without protection. This was very dangerous. Many healthy doctors fell ill and died during vaccine transportation, not to mention those sick children. It is estimated that the deaths are difficult to count.
However, this method has indeed saved more people, so I will not make any evaluation. But one thing is for sure, there was no vaccine aid, only productivity.
