The history of vaccines
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Variolation
12 min read
The article discusses pre-vaccine folk practices and the transition to scientific immunization. Variolation was the deliberate inoculation with smallpox material that preceded Jenner's cowpox vaccine - the 'gruesome folk practice' referenced in the article that readers would benefit from understanding in depth.
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Germ theory of disease
14 min read
The article explicitly contrasts the 18th century belief in miasma theory with later understanding of pathogens. Understanding how germ theory developed and replaced miasma theory provides essential context for why vaccine development took the path it did.
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Electron microscope
14 min read
The article specifically mentions Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll's electron microscope as the breakthrough that finally allowed scientists to see viruses like smallpox. Understanding this technology explains why virus research was so limited before the 1940s.
Before vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based ‘vaccine farms’ to see how scientists stumbled toward the first vaccines against infectious diseases: smallpox, rabies, TB, polio, and more.
Through the stories of milkmaids and aristocrats, secret lab notebooks, microscopes and cell culture, they explore how trial and error turned gruesome folk practices into the science of immunization, and how it all began with a single pustule.
Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Coefficient Giving about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.
You can watch or listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://scientificdiscovery.dev
Jacob’s blog: https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/
Transcript
Saloni Dattani:
You would extract brain tissue from a rabid dog, inject it into the brains of rabbits.
Jacob Trefethen:
Frankenstein was written much earlier in the 19th century. You can sort of get why people had a view of scientists that was kind of like, “What the hell are they up to?”
Saloni Dattani:
He compiled all of it into his own manuscript, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae.
Jacob Trefethen:
He submitted, got rejected, reviewer 2 had some comments, and then he became a Substacker?
Saloni Dattani:
Basically until the 1940s, you couldn’t see the smallpox virus at all. And all of that changes when Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll developed the electron microscope. There’s an enormous improvement in the resolution that you can get, thousands of times higher than light microscopy. And that finally allows you to see viruses.
[podcast jingle]
Saloni Dattani:
I think we have a few little announcements to make. So we have finally a print edition of Works in Progress magazine! And I’m holding it up right now, if you’re watching the video, and it’s very pretty, and if you haven’t got one yet, you should get it. It’s full of super interesting articles, including one about inflatable space stations.
Jacob Trefethen:
Inflatable space stations. At the time of the recording, Saloni’s just arrived and mine has not, and I’m going to be checking my mailbox all day long. I can’t wait for mine, and from what I’ve heard from you, Saloni, and others who were involved in the production of it, it’s a beautiful piece in its own right just ...
This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.