Diseases and vaccines: Smallpox and cholera

At the beginning of the 20th century, in 1918, the influenza epidemic killed more than 20 million human beings. In recent years, between 2009 and 2010, the Mexican influenza pandemic alarmed the world, fearing that the history of deaths would repeat itself again, but thanks to the actions of the health authorities and the army, as well as the unusual discipline of the population, the cases only reached thousands and mortality barely exceeded 1000 people.

However, as we all know, in March 2020, a pandemic was declared due to a type of coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 and, until now, continues to cause infections and deaths throughout the world.

During the history of the humanity, there have been terrible diseases whose cures were totally unknown until scientists of the stature of Leewenhoek, Pasteur, Koch, Roux, Behring and Finlay, among many others, constructed the way for the understanding of microbes and the search for vaccines to combat the diseases caused by them.

It was Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch merchant, who, at the end of the 18th century, built the first lenses with which he discovered the existence of tiny beings known today as microbes. With the works of the Italian father Spallanzani, the French scientist Luis Pasteur and the German doctor Roberto Koch, it was discovered that many of these beings were the cause of various epidemic diseases. The number of scientists to whom today we owe the cure and in some cases, the eradication of the diseases as horrible as black pox that hit Europe during the Middle Ages is enormous.

Let us see something about smallpox and cholera, their cures and to whom we owe this great benefits.

Smallpox

It was a disease characterized by skin eruptions that led to deformations and even death. It was present in the world since 10,000 BC until 1980, the year in which it was declared the first disease to be eradicated in the world after intense global vaccination campaigns. The virus that caused it is known as variola virus.

For centuries its contagion was due to direct contact with the sores of the sick, with ill people breathing and even with their clothes and other objects that they had touched. Most of those infected people died within the second week of infection and many of the survivors had scars on their skin. Smallpox was the cause of epidemics in Europe such as the XVIII century and in America where it was known as hueyzahuatl or large leprosy.

The first modern vaccine for this disease is due to the English doctor Edward Jenner in 1796. In the beginning, the rural doctor began to vaccinate the population of the town where he lived, but over the years, its benefits became such popular that the English nobles began to vaccinate their families and even Napoleon Bonaparte ordered his troop to be vaccinated in 1805.

During the second half of the 20th century, there were intense vaccination campaigns with the aim of eradicating the disease. This situation finally was achieved in 1980. Although the variola virus is no longer transmitted between humans, samples of this virus are preserved in the United States and in Russia for its study.

 

Cholera 

It is an acute intestinal disease that produces rice-shaped diarrhea with a terrible fishy smell and can lead to severe dehydration. Cholera is transmitted by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae and is acquired by ingesting infected food and water. In the world between 1.3 and 4 million people fall ill with a mortality of up to more than 100,000 cases a year.

The Italian doctor Filippo Pancini was the one who discovered the bacilli in 1854 and the Spanish doctor Jaime Ferrán Cluá prepared the first vaccine against cholera 30 years later. By the way, Ferran also discovered vaccines against typhus and tuberculosis. Wow!

In 1893 the German bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine developed a vaccine with fewer side effects and in 1896 the German bacteriologist Wilhelm Kolle introduced a vaccine easier to prepare. An oral vaccine was developed in the 1990s.

 

As we have seen, nowadays no one gets smallpox and cholera disease occurs in regions with poor sanitation in the treatment of water and food. Good hygiene and a better standard of living in the world could help eradicate cholera too; the good news is that at least there are vaccines for both diseases thanks to the constant scientific research.