Thread by @DisabilityStor1

1/ No history of vaccination should begin with Jenner. The practice of inoculation is a necessary precursor to any history of vaccination, but often gets left behind, diminished or derided. Not to mention Benjamin Jesty. #historyisnotGreatMen #histmed #histSTM (thread)

https://twitter.com/SmithsonianMag/status/1038396805300543489

2/ Smallpox has been with us possibly since the Neolithic Revolution. And at least since the 16th century, variolation (or insufflation (blowing dried smallpox matter into the nose) was routinely practiced as a preventive in China. And that is based on written records alone.

3/ In India from the 17th century onwards, there is written evidence of variolation, or dipping a sharp iron needle into dried smallpox matter and puncturing the skin in a small circle, usually on the upper arm. Practiced during the spring, variolation used 'pocky matter'....

4/...that had been dried in a pouch kept close to the warmth of the human body or dried in the sun or sometimes mixed with hot steam and herbs. The effect could have been to weaken the virus. The practice also was practiced by female healers in Africa and #OttomanEmpire.

5/ ...In 1714 and 1716, reports of the Turkish method of inoculation were made to the Royal Society in England, by Emmanuel Timoni, and Giacomo Pylarini. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador, is credited with introducing the process to Great Britain in 1721.

6/ After experimenting on orphans and prisoners, Lady Montague vaccinated the children of the royal family. In 1745-46, the London Smallpox Hospital, or the Middlesex County Hospital for Smallpox and Inoculation, was established the first establishment of its type in Europe.

7/ In 1721 Boston, the enslaved Onesimus taught the preacher Cotton Mather about inoculation and the latter with Zabdiel Boylston practiced inoculation, against some protests. A limited trial showed that 6 deaths/ 244 who were inoculated compared to a death rate of 844/5980...

8/ In 1777, George Washington ordered Dr. William Shippen Jr., to inoculate Continental soldiers. “Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army...we should have more to dread from it, than from the Sword of the Enemy."

9/ Jenner HIMSELF had been inoculated with smallpox as a child as an eight year old child in Gloucester in 1757. The procedure was effective, the boy developed a mild case of smallpox and was subsequently immune.I find it hard to believe that he was not influenced by inoculation.

10/ Vaccination's origins should be told through this complicated global narrative, rather than rest on one man.Jenner did not just have a hunch, his work was the product of centuries of human curiosity, desperation, fear, ingenuity and experimentation. #histmed.