The term vaccine comes from vacca, the Latin word for cow. In 1796 the first modern vaccine was created when diseased infectious material from cow pox, a disease affecting cows udders, was injected into humans to protect them from smallpox. Unfortunately deaths from smallpox rose dramatically about 20 years after the vaccine became compulsory. In the US and England, the death rate from Pertussis (whooping cough) dropped from about 60 deaths per thousand in the mid 1800s to about 2 per thousand in the early 1950s, even before the Pertussis vaccine was used. Deaths from measles from the mid 1800s until the 1963 introduction of the measles vaccine fell at a nearly identical rate. In both cases, even before the introduction of the vaccines, the death rate from these diseases had already fallen approximately 97%.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 23:28:00 +0000
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