RE: What did you learn to do because of the pandemic?
June 15, 2021 at 1:55 pm
(This post was last modified: June 15, 2021 at 1:57 pm by BrianSoddingBoru4.)
(June 15, 2021 at 1:51 pm)Brian37 Wrote:(June 15, 2021 at 11:02 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Actually, inoculation goes much further back than 1796, to the 10th century, IIRC.
As to how Jenner worked it out, it was largely by observation and inference. There’s a disease similar to, but much milder than smallpox, called ‘cowpox’. Jenner noticed that while many milkmaids got cowpox, none of them who had had it got smallpox. He hypothesized that having had cowpox conferred immunity against smallpox. He deliberately infected a boy with cowpox. When the child recovered, he deliberately infected the same boy with smallpox. He didn’t get sick.
Boru
Certainly observation has been the linchpin of the building blocks of the history that lead up to modern science. But modern science didn't exist at the time of Plato or Socrates, or the ancient Egyptians, despite their master building techniques of their respective periods. 10th century wouldn't be that much different.
"Trial and error" has always existed for sure, be it medicine or engineering. But that does not mean those in the past were accurate in any modern sense. One can tinker and repeat and still not know why what they did was working.
Today's vaccines are literally based on DNA/RNA sequencing and not just injecting the virus like poison to build up immunity. It is like the difference between Franklin making a kite, and Boeing coming up with the next jumbo passenger jet.
Certainly, the way we make vaccines now is much safer and more effective. But you wondered how vaccination could have happened without the knowledge of DNA. So I explained it.
But Jenner didn’t use trial and error. He used the scientific method.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson