Open Thread - 11 June 2026 - Vaccinations - Smallpox
Vaccinations - Small Pox
I recently went down a rabbit hole I never expected. I was reading a bit on Quora, and came across an article about how, 250 years ago, 'a 52 year old Massachusetts doctor turned major general died screaming and blind in a tent on the Richelieu River, and the United States lost its best shot at making Canada the fourteenth state.' Hmm, interesting.
General John Thomas, a country physician from Kingston, Massachusetts died in that tent, of smallpox. His death, and the huge losses the army was suffering due to smallpox, led George Washington to have the entire Continental army inoculated, in secret, 8 months later.
Ok, so, ummm, I didn't know the history of smallpox, that there were inoculations before and during the Revolutionary War, and I didn't know about the difference between inoculations and vaccinations (which were developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s). Wanting to learn more led me further down the rabbit hole.
Inoculation or variolation (from the article on history.com)
Inoculation against smallpox induces immunity. This method likely started in the 1400s in China, Africa, and perhaps India. The first mention of it in written documents was published in China in 1549 and inoculation became widespread in China, reducing the mortality of smallpox (from up to 35% in some outbreaks with no inoculations to around 2% in outbreaks in inoculated populations), soon after. This type of inoculation, called variolation, did cause death at times, but at a rate of 0.5 to 2%, much less than a smallpox outbreak would cause. It was taken up by societies in Africa and the Near East, and introduced to England in the early 1700s.
In variolation a pustule on an infected person's body (whether the infected person was inoculated and going through the minor infection that caused, or not inoculated and suffering full-blown small pox) was opened and the contents were scraped across the healthy person's skin. Or the dried contents of a smallpox pustule or scab were blown up someone's nose. Gag.
In 1721 an outbreak of smallpox in Boston was dealt with by variolation. This was developed by Cotton Mather, or actually, his slave, Onesimus, who had been inoculated (variolated) in Africa. A physician, Zabdiel Boylston, inoculated almost 300 people in Boston, by the method Onesimus taught.
This method was used in the Revolutionary War as mentioned above. By the 1790s a smallpox vaccination, developed in part from cowpox, was developed and improved throughout the 1800s (by Edward Jenner, amongst others). It had been noted that those who worked with cattle, like milk maids, did not develop smallpox. They instead caught cowpox. Learning this eventually led to the smallpox vaccination (based on cowpox, not smallpox), which was much better than variolation in that the vaccinated person could not infect others and the vaccination had much smaller side-effects than variolation and was seldom fatal. The word vaccine (vaccination) was taken from the Latin name for cowpox and relates to 'vaccinia' or things to do with cows, in Latin. Edward Jenner came up with the term. And so, vaccination and vaccine relate to cows!
How's that for a rabbit hole? Ohh, by the way, smallpox has basically been eradicated because of vaccination, WHO declared it gone in 1980. We all probably have the scar of our vaccination, done by the bifurcated needle.
Ok, Here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!
Comments
Happy Thors-Day!
Hope it's a good day for everyone! After a bunch of rainy days we are heading into some 'heat' for here (90 next Monday, maybe!). Luckily it's all wet right now, so fire danger should be low... for a bit. Not that way elsewhere, I know
.
Hope you have a great, smallpox free, weekend! And let us know what's up!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
Pox is indeed a rabbit hole
.
Chicken Pox, Cow Pox, Small Pox, Big Pox , Little Pox and Acne
are all variants of a viral disease seen as skin and mucous membrane
lesions in humans. The old curse "a pox on your house" is meant as a
disparaging remark. I didn't have to submit to the needle routine,
which left permanent scars. We were administered something in
the form of a spiked sugar cube. That was 60 years ago
so I guess it took - pox free after all of this time!
Syphilis, Mono and Gonorrhea are another matter.
All social diseases.
Thanks for the OT Sima.
Zionism is a social disease
I'm another sugar-cube child,
but then I got given the then-brand-new multivirus jab a year later anyway (out of an abundance of caution, I suppose). They lined everybody up in school and stuck 'em all, whether they'd sucked a cube or not. Not a lot of parental consent there: you wanted to go to school, you got stuck.
Of course, by then I'd already gotten to experience the visceral pleasures of having measles, mumps, and chicken pox (all at the same time!), anyway, in the previous local outbreak. Something about horses and barn doors comes to mind, but I just can't quite put my finger on it.
So I have lots and lots of immunity now, I suppose. I just hope all to hellandgone that the shingles vaccine actually works- I want nothing more to do with that virus after the first go-round, lemme tellya, and the friends I have who've had shingles tell me that it is definitely worth avoiding...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Good morning Sima. Thanks for the info and the OT.
I may or may not still have that scar, I was double needled sometime over 70 years ago, but don't know when. Did not, however, prevent chicken pox, which most of my age group got at one time or another, like measles, etc.
Supposed to get up to 93 today, which means near 100 in our back yard. Past time to plant my Red Aztec Spinach [Huauzontle] (Chenopodium berlandieri), heat tolerant pick and come again greens that eventually develop a seed head similar to broccoli which is also edible. From Terroir seeds of Chino Valley AZ. I sould, of course do this early today, like rsn. Will likely be an inside day, but some stuff must be done, such as bringing in the trash cans once they come by and pick them up. Beyond that, I believe it is a day to push paper and do shit like that.
Trump thinks, sign this set of demands or we'll keep bombing until you do is "negotiations", it is not, it is strong arm thuggery aka extortion. There isn't even anybody that the Iranians could negotiate an agreement with, simply a couple of very corrupt realtors, so what the hell can he be whining about, other than getting his ass kicked. Yep, he lost this one, and, beyond amassing unconscionable wealth, is quite simply a loser in every sense of the word.
I'd better get started on what little I'm gonna do outside, and then check out the news to see just how bad and stupid it is.
be well and have a good one
EDIT: Corrected '79 years ago' to '70 years ago'
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Best and most inspiring thing I have seen in a very long time.
https://twitter.com/i/status/2064855277875171767
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
that is some kind of an X link
.
can't access without sign-up. Won't do that.
Interested in how Albania is suddenly thrust into the headlines.
Turns out trump's baby daughter is the PR spox for developing
an elite resort on
SazanEpstein Island with Kushnerand support by the Zion regime with the nod from their
president Bejram. Bunch of crooked blokes anyway.
Zionism is a social disease
Hmmm...
All I had to do was click on the link and it showed. Maybe someone has a suggestion for you.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
The link works fine for me...
sometimes ad blockers and anti-tracking extensions can interfere with X link redirects and force you to a login wall.
Here is the tweet so you can see it until you get the
issues sorted out.
Uh...got any context?
We can't even be certain he really got away.
Also, that'd probably have gone very differently if they'd had/were willing to use guns.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
No way of knowing
if he truly escaped, nor if he would have tried to if the police were armed. It was just 20 seconds of a man determined to get his government to stop the double standard legal system in Ireland. Same things are going on in England, Scotland, and France.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Hi Sima!
Very interesting history on smallpox vaccination. I had no clue.
This has come up a couple of times lately. Maybe someone can enlighten me.
Some adults in the US are obsessed with Pokemon cards, games, whatever it is. I'm totally ignorant about it. I wouldn't mention it, except Rashid is complaining about some Pokemon event in South Korea, that is limited to South Korean citizens, foreigners not allowed. Raphael says it's "discrimination" against foreigners, that South Koreans don't understand why discrimination is wrong and should be unlawful, etc. To me this is reductio ad absurdum. Should the people at the event venue be required to become immigration enforcement personnel, judging the credentials of foreigners? I think "No Chinese" signs at retail stores, and open harassment of people in public venues by unauthorized persons demanding identification, and committing assaults, detaining persons, etc., while screaming "Are you Chinese?" are a far more serious problem.
Why isn't he focused on the discrimination against foreigners and minorities, Koreans in particular, that takes place every day in Japan?
All kinds of games and fakery are played at pokemon retail outlets in the US. They have rationing rules when a new shipment of cards arrive. You can't pretend to be someone else, you can't buy for someone else, etc. These businesses get swamped at these times.
Watched this Warrick Powell interview with a Chinese law of the sea expert Yan Yan this morning. It was an excellent summary of the issues in the South China Sea.
己所不欲，勿施于人。
Using the lie that Iran shot down an Apache as a pretext,
the US attacked attacked and damaged or destroyed 2 iranian reservoirs. The reservoirs supply the Bemani and Kouhestak areas of Sirik town leaving 20,000 residents of the region without access to safe drinking water. This is while temperatures range from 45 to 50 degrees Celsius (113 to 122 Fahrenheit), This has been reported by both AFP and SCMP starting on the 10th.
Pure terrorist war crime.
be well and habe a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Typically, I visit sites where people randomly comment
.
...to get a feel for what's going on in the collective. I always scan a few comments, like waste water testing, to gauge the public mood. YouTube is a good place for that. No one really knows anybody and folks often just blurt whatever disconnected thing is on their mind.
Maybe it's just me, but today, there is crazy talk and confessions on the boards. Deep fears and defeat — and small confessions about the way they live. The endless sacrifices that diminished them. Plus sudden ranting about Data Centers. There is nothing on these pages related to 'data centers.
And it flashed into my mind that all these people, on very different news pages with unrelated topics — were all suddenly made aware that the US is Finished. Morally defeated. The US has suddenly turned to ashes. And the people were exploited, betrayed, and abandoned by their very rotten leaders. This would be The Day when they finally figured that out.
The Day when Americans finally see what the rest of the world can see. But wait. Americans have been on this agonizing march of diminishing economic security since 9/11 — (and looking rattier and crazier year after year). And they are just noticing their condition now? This probably would be the moment that they figure out, at last, that they have lost everything — including the latest stupid US war. They might even sense that things are going to get much worse. Americans will be paying for all the damage and murdering that they did in Iran — for decades — while the world looks on.
That's the problem with Democracy — You vote for it, you own it.
...But we DIDN'T.
My whole life (at least), we've been living under a combination of brazenly-illegitimate coupsters, puppets, favored sons and daughters of a rigged system, and even under the most honest of circumstances, catfish.
This isn't a democracy, and retroactively declaring it to have been one just to stick the public with the bill would be a dick-move for the ages; sure, that would be standard practice for the aforementioned, but I don't understand why YOU'RE saying it.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I might be labelled as a party pooper but I think that the
latest comments from Trump are simply a means of market manipulation to satisfy his insatiable grifting.
A few hours later.
Flat out lie, cannot be true. n/t
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I knew most of that (definitely not some)...
...I DO NOT have such a scar.
A miracle, for certain; where exactly was it since that it all went so terribly wrong?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
When it went wrong?
This law that’s resulted in drug companies do whatever benefits their bottom line…
“In 1986, Congress passed a law protecting vaccine manufacturers from civil personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits resulting from vaccine injuries. That law is the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (the Vaccine Act). “
Anya