ANKARA: (Web Desk) You will be surprised to know that the world’s first use of the vaccine method began during the Ottoman Caliphate. However, the process was in its infancy when it arrived in the UK through Lady Marie Vertley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, where physician Edward Jenner developed the first smallpox vaccine to save the world from the deadly disease.
According to American media, the story begins with a letter from Lady Montagu to her friend in London from Istanbul in 1717. In the letter, he expressed astonishment and said that the royal physicians cut people’s bodies and put a special thing on them which protects them from smallpox.
According to the websites of the US Library of Medicine and Baylor University Medical Center, Lady Montagu’s husband, Edward Montagu, was the British ambassador to Turkey from 1717 to 1721. His wife, Marie Montagu, was deeply interested in treating smallpox because she had gone through bitter experiences and observations of the contagious disease.
The woman from Britain’s wealthy Kabir family had barely survived the deadly plague, but the disease left many ugly scars on her body. Many of her close relatives and friends had died of smallpox, which left her in a state of fear and she wanted to protect her children from the epidemic.
This was at a time when smallpox was wreaking havoc in many countries, including Europe. In the 18th century, about 400,000 people died each year in Europe alone, while one-third of those who recovered lost their sight and the rest had ugly scars on their faces and bodies. There was no cure for the deadly epidemic at that time.
When Lady Marie Wortley arrived in Istanbul with her husband, Edward Montagu, in 1717, she was surprised to find that the smallpox epidemic in Turkey was under control because people there were treated in a special way to prevent smallpox. ۔
Lady Montagu was so convinced of the procedure that she sent her five-year-old son to the royal doctor for smallpox vaccination, along with embassy doctor Charles Midland.
When the Montague family returned home in 1721 after the end of the diplomatic period, Dr. Midland was with them. To persuade British Crown physicians of the treatment, he cut off Montagu’s four-year-old daughter in front of him and applied a drug he had brought with him from Turkey.
Even before Monteiro, traders traveling to Turkey brought news of smallpox treatment, and through them, Europeans knew that the beautiful girls brought to the palace of the Ottoman Empire from Mount Qaf and the Central Asian Russian states were the same. The method was used to protect against smallpox so that the people living in the royal palace would not suffer from any disease like smallpox. Many of these maids later became powerful queens and were deeply involved in the affairs of the empire.
The world’s first vaccine
Despite information about the treatment of smallpox in Turkey, the British royal physicians ignored the treatment as a tip, but when the family of a British ambassador offered their daughter the experiment, they took it seriously The British Crown licensed Dr. Maidland to perform the experiment on six prisoners. He was cut and given medicine and after some time he was kept in a smallpox-like environment, but he survived.
The royal family was so impressed with the experience that the two daughters of the Princess of Wales were given the drug, which led to serious efforts to develop a vaccine in Britain, and finally, in 1796, Dr. Edward Jensen obtained material from a smallpox-infected cow. Has introduced the world’s first vaccine that will eradicate the scourge from the world in the coming years.
What was the specific medicine for smallpox?
This is also an interesting story. In those days, whenever there was an outbreak of smallpox in Turkey, cowherds were usually safe. Research by Turkish doctors has revealed that cows also suffer from a specific type of smallpox in which pus-filled rashes appear on their bodies, which are filled with pus. During the care of cows, the cow’s hand or any part of the body often touches the cow. If there is any smallpox, its contents get on the cow’s body. And if there is a scratch or cut in this place, then the germs enter the human body.
Turkish doctors have learned that the entry of infected cow’s pus into the human body through a cut or scratch protects against smallpox. He made this observation part of his treatment and began to make small incisions with a needle on the bodies of healthy people and apply cow dung to them. This was the earliest form of the vaccine.
The antidote for smallpox from a smallpox-infected cow
You must have heard the saying that poison kills poison. The man was aware of this fact thousands of years ago. There is evidence that about a thousand years ago, in some parts of China, people used to drip a few drops of snake venom into their throats to protect them from being bitten by snakes. In the same way, the smallpox of cow was also used as an antidote against smallpox.
Our body’s immune system has the ability to fight off the germs or viruses of a disease when our immune system builds an army to fight against it, which in medical parlance is called antibodies. The vaccine works on the same principle. It alerts our natural immune system to the dangers of a particular epidemic, which prepares it for a fight.
Preparations of vaccines against infectious viruses, germs
The introduction of the smallpox vaccine in 1796 paved the way for the development of vaccines against other pandemics. And in the years that followed, vaccines against many infectious diseases were developed using the same method, especially pediatric diseases including measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, and tetanus. These vaccines are helping to save millions of lives every year.
A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that more than two dozen infectious disease vaccines are currently being used in the United States.
Epidemic viruses were used to make vaccines until the 1950s. For this purpose, they were bred in the laboratory and a weak or dead virus or part of it was used in the vaccine. Then the development of science opened new avenues for making vaccines.
Vaccines are now being developed genetically, the latest example being the Code-19 vaccine. Three types of vaccines are currently being used against this rapidly spreading epidemic, which has been developed using conventional, DNA, and genetic code methods.
The genetic code vaccine is called mRNA. It sends a message to the human immune system that a special external enemy has entered the body. The immune system not only develops antibodies against it but also stores it in its memory so that in the future, whenever the coronavirus attacks, it can recognize it and start an immediate fight. Although vaccines developed under the new technique have begun to be used, research and experiments on them are still ongoing. It takes ten years or more for a vaccine to start working after it has been developed. It assesses how safe, effective and long-lasting it is for human use.
The three main stages of vaccine preparation
After laboratory preparation and initial analysis and experiments, the vaccine is tested on humans in three stages. The first step involves a small group of volunteers to test the vaccine’s ability to be safe for humans and to produce antibodies.
The second phase involves several hundred volunteers and determines how many doses and dosage the vaccine will need to be effective and how long it will last.
In the third phase, thousands of volunteers are vaccinated to see how effective it is on different groups of people.
The coronavirus has been around for more than a year, with vaccines being used to prevent it. The move is aimed at curbing its rapid spread and deaths. Many COD-19 vaccines have been developed in different countries.
Although organizations such as the CDC in the United States are hinting that the coronavirus may return to life after the vaccination, the World Health Organization is still warning that caution is needed.
Researchers agree that the short-lived vaccine against any pandemic is the corona vaccine, but the vaccine is still in its experimental stages in many countries. This will take more time to compile complete information and data about it.