I'm half expecting someone to pop up from the shadows and say this is fake and link to how this kid was actually stung by a million micro-bees or something..
Not because I don't believe this is how vaccines work, or I'm against vaccinations, it just seems to be my experience on the internet lately.
Seriously though. Weren't the mortality rates for children pretty much through the roof in the 1700s? Wtf could they possibly have believed was in the vaccines back then that would make them go "no thanks, I think I'll take my chances with small pox and the bubonic fucking plague. I hear only MOST people that get infected die, and I like those odds for my kid."
Inoculations against smallpox were already in use at the time. Jenner discovered women that became infected with cowpox while milking cows not only developed milder symptoms than smallpox, they also became immune to smallpox just as people who survived smallpox. People weren't stupid. They were scared. How do you convince people that don't want to get a disease that you can protect them by giving them a disease?
But that was the point. Variolation was already in existence before Jenner. It involved infecting people with smallpox and usually there was recovery but not always, so understandably people were scared. With Jenner's method, however, people were infected with cowpox, which caused little to no symptoms in humans. In the days of smallpox, nearly every survivor had the disfiguring pockmarks; but milkmaids were known then to have flawless skin. That was the observation that led to Jenner's discovery. The reason for resistance to Jenner's vaccination was mainly due to propaganda, not different from what we see today.
Not because I don't believe this is how vaccines work, or I'm against vaccinations, it just seems to be my experience on the internet lately.
Seriously though. Weren't the mortality rates for children pretty much through the roof in the 1700s? Wtf could they possibly have believed was in the vaccines back then that would make them go "no thanks, I think I'll take my chances with small pox and the bubonic fucking plague. I hear only MOST people that get infected die, and I like those odds for my kid."
^ my brain, everytime