Cure For Smallpox Disease example essay topic

Edward Jenner " Now James, I need you to try to stay completely still. It may hurt your arm a bit when I make the cuts. It won't take too terribly long, and if you pay close attention it will be done before you know it. Nurse, please hold his arm out towards me. Please be sure that he doesn't move his arm, I don't want there to be any accidents."Those were the last words I heard until the first tests were over. I was in the office of one of the most amazing men I have ever known.

His name is Edward Jenner; and I was one of his test subjects in finding a cure for smallpox. Smallpox is a disease that most people who contract it call one of the most painful and frightening experiences of their lives."My name is James Phillips, the first person given the smallpox vaccine; and the one who helped Edward Jenner prove that it actually works. At the first appointment I stepped into Jenner's office, he told me about the test procedure, and the called for an assistant to help him run the test. He then asked me to sit down a chair and relax, then asked me to stay patient and stay still as he made two small cuts in my arm. Well, he made the cuts; and they didn't hurt at all.

Now Jenner told me he would be introducing a lesser-known disease called "cowpox" to the cuts. Cowpox was believed by some to be the only safe way to effectively develop immunities to smallpox. Jenner himself said that when someone had overcome cowpox; they had also become immune to smallpox."A little less than fifty or so days after the first day of testing, was called back to Edward Jenner's office for my second appointment. We followed basically the same procedure as the first time. Although this time he introduced the cuts to smallpox. The strangest thing happened, we waited and waited.

But like Jenner predicted, it had no effect on me at all". Everyone who heard the news of Jenner's discovery was amazed. He had successfully come up with the first safe cure for naturally occurring smallpox. Before Jenner's acclaimed "Vaccination", the only way to become immune to smallpox was to get infected by it, and then hopefully survive it.

A woman named Mary Wortley introduced this method in 1718, 78 years before Jenner's solution. Sadly, because Wortley's way involved contracting smallpox disease, people were dying nearly everyday trying to become immune. Aside from being the man who found a cure for smallpox, Edward Jenner had a pretty interesting life. He was born May 17th, 1749 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. In 1770 he went to London to study medicine under a surgeon named John Hunter.

Soon after, he returned to Berkeley where he then remained for most of his life. Jenner then began his quest to find a cure for smallpox disease. Then, after his discovery in 1796, he received honors from all over the world. In 1798 he published his findings in "Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccine', then in 1799 he published "Further Observations of the Variolae Vaccine. Following his writings, smallpox vaccines became the number one way to prevent smallpox from spreading any further. Luckily for Jenner, while he was working for a cure he missed nearly all of his regular work time.

In result of his sacrifice, Jenner was granted 10,000 pounds in 1802 and then 20,000 pounds in 1806. Aside from his sudden wealth, Jenner was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Medicine Degree at Oxford University. In the end, Jenner's "Vaccination" helped lay the standards for today's immunology and has helped immunize millions of people. Thanks to this great man and his work, in 1980 it was officially announced to the world that naturally occurring smallpox had been eliminated from the face of the earth.