COWPOX

COWPOX

(naskah ujian PP IV-IPS 1982)

        Edwar Jenner was a simple country doctor who lived in the 18th century. It was he who conquered smallpox, the terrible disease that through the centuries had killed or disfigured contless victims.
        He worked as a country doctor in cloucestershire, one of the country districts in england. He noticed that a milkmaid who had come to consult him had said: “i cannot catch small pox because i have had cowpox”. Cowpox was a harmless disease caught from cows in which the hands become covered with small boil like pinples. Jenner was interested in this. He found that there was a strong believe among country folk that if they had once had cowpox they could not catc the more serious disease of small pox.
        For nearly 25 years jenner worked on these ideas. He actually gave people cowpox and found that very rarely did they afterwards get small pox. Then on the 14th may, 1796, he carried out his famous experiment. He infected a small boy a milkmaid. When the boy had barely recovered from this disease, jenner infected the same boy with smallpox. As he expected the boy did not catch the more serious and deadly disease. Thah was the beginning of vaccination which has saved, and still is saving, many thousand of lives.