At the end of the seventeenth century, Europe was in the throes of an unprecedented pandemic known as the “Great Plague”. This epidemic included several nasty long-term side effects, including leprosy, blindness and death. To make matters worse, this plague was also transmitted through the air, making it even harder to avoid infection. As a result, many people within the city of London suffered and died, and smallpox spread like wildfire throughout the city. This left the city’s doctors with one of their most difficult challenges: how to prevent the spread of the disease.
When smallpox devastated the world in the late 18th century, scores of victims died from the disease. Those who survived were left with permanent scars and disfigurements that made it impossible for them to live normal lives. As a result, many people in Europe and America sought a cure from the Greek doctor, Georges Guene, who had come from Constantinople and who had developed an effective smallpox vaccine.
One of the most gruesome diseases to ever plague the human race is smallpox. Unfortunately, the disease was eradicated in 1980, but that’s not to say it was completely eradicated. In fact, there is still smallpox in some of the world’s most remote locations, both in the wild and in the laboratory.
205,893 cases of smallpox were reported by US government health officials between 1899 and 1905, during a catastrophic smallpox pandemic, but some infectious disease experts believe the figure could have been five times higher.
The phrase “show a scar” became popular around the turn of the twentieth century for everyone congregating in a public location, whether it was work, a café, or a school.
The smallpox vaccine was first introduced in the 18th century by British doctor Edward Jenner, who scored the skin of the upper arm and dabbed small amounts of the smallpox virus into the lesion instead of using a syringe. After that, the wound would boil and scab up, eventually creating a prominent scar.
According to Time, “Americans considered the smallpox scar as proof of vaccination, or a sort of early vaccine passport.”
As a succession of outbreaks swept the country, many states made mandatory vaccines mandatory. Others looked to employers to make the vaccine a requirement of employment.
In 1903, Maine’s government declared, “No person shall be allowed to enter the employ of, or labor in, a logging camp who cannot demonstrate a good vaccination scar.”
Failure to get vaccinated may result in a $10 fine, jail time, or both in 1913, according to Baltimore health officials.
Vaccinations are being given to Albany residents. (Photo credit: Getty Images) )
Despite the fact that a physical scar from the smallpox vaccination made it simpler to identify persons who had been vaccinated, many Americans were still skeptical of the vaccine.
“The protracted effort of the New York Board of Health to maintain smallpox under proper control has been in part thwarted by public apathy, but still more by reluctance to accept the conspicuous advantages of immunity afforded by vaccination,” according to the New York Times in 1904.
Pastor Hennin Jacobson contended in the historic U.S. Supreme Court case of Jacobson v Massachusetts that “compulsion to introduce disease into a healthy system is a violation of liberty” that same year.
The Supreme Court upheld the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Board of Health’s authority to require smallpox vaccination, writing: “The good and welfare of the Commonwealth, of which the legislature is primarily the judge, is the basis on which the police power rests in Massachusetts upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the rigor of a community has the rigor of a community has the rigor of a community has the rigor of a community has the rigor
Newspapers of the period were full of stories about young men and women faking their scars — some by painstakingly exposing a patch of flesh to nitric acid to make the same nickel-sized scar as present-day fake COVID-19 immunization cards.
According to Time, such citizens stayed on the margins while much more Americans began to submit rather than jeopardize their employment, mobility, or children’s education.
Smallpox was nearly eradicated in the United States by the middle of the twentieth century, thanks to decades of broad immunization rates. Efforts by states to mandate vaccination statuses also set a precedent for most school-aged children to be vaccinated against diseases including measles, polio, and pertussis.
The physical scar of the smallpox vaccine, while not quite a record on paper, was the first successful “vaccine passport” of sorts to help curtail one of the worst epidemics of the twentieth century.
The vaccine against the smallpox virus was the first of its kind. It was created in the late eighteenth century by Edward Jenner and was used to prevent the spread of smallpox, which had become increasingly lethal over the previous few centuries due to the virus’s immunosuppressive qualities. The vaccine was created by applying cowpox to a patient’s hand, which then causes the cowpox to transfer to the patient’s blood. From there, the cowpox travels to the patient’s skin, where it induces immunity against the smallpox, thus preventing the spread of the disease.. Read more about polio vaccine passport and let us know what you think.
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