On October 26th, 1977, the last smallpox patient in the world, Somali cook Ali Mao Martin, was cured. On May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization announced in Nairobi, Kenya, that smallpox, which had been harmful to mankind for thousands of years, had been eradicated. It is precisely because of Chinese’s first invention of human pox that smallpox has become the only infectious disease that human beings can eliminate so far.
Qing the emperor shunzhi died of smallpox.
Smallpox is a severe infectious disease and epidemic disease, which was once one of the four major diseases in pediatrics (pox, rash, panic and rash). It is caused by smallpox virus infection, spread by contact or droplets, popular all over the world, and extremely harmful to human beings. About 500 million people died of the disease in human history, and the survivors will also leave pockmarked scars (pits) for life.
The early symptoms of smallpox are systemic poisoning, sudden chills, high fever (39℃-41℃), headache, general aches, vomiting, etc., followed by rash, papules, herpes and pustules on the body in turn, with a sinister condition and high mortality. In the twenty-third year of Qing Daoguang (1843), "smallpox was prevalent, and ten failed to save five. There are hundreds of children who die. " The first emperor, Emperor Shunzhi, died of smallpox at the age of 23.
In Qing dynasty, smallpox was the number one plague in the Forbidden City. Because compared with the more closed Manchu people outside the customs, the Han people in the Central Plains have a certain immunity to smallpox. Manchu people who entered the customs in the early Qing Dynasty were far more afraid of smallpox than the Ming army and peasant rebels.
In the first year of Shunzhi, the Qing army was preparing to enter the customs. Prince Hao of Su, who led the troops, said to another general, "I haven’t had smallpox yet. This expedition made me go with me. Do you want me to die?" Six years later, Duo Duo, the 15th brother of Hogg and a famous soldier, died of smallpox at the age of 36.
In the early Qing dynasty, there was a special classification of household registration management. Residents were divided into "familiar body" and "born body". "Familiar body" refers to people who have experienced smallpox or smallpox; A "living body" is a person who has never had smallpox or is suspected of carrying the source of the disease. The government stipulates that once the epidemic situation is predicted, "living people" are not allowed to stay in the city.
At the end of the 17th year of Shunzhi, the emperor shunzhi contracted smallpox, and his son Xuanye, the later Emperor Kangxi, was afraid to visit his sick father for fear of infection. In order to pray for the emperor to survive the disaster, the Queen of Pox was enshrined in the palace, and all the Spring Festival couplets, door gods and lanterns hung for the Spring Festival were removed. At the same time, the whole country was ordered not to fry beans, light lamps and splash water, and an Amnesty was issued. But the emperor shunzhi was still killed by smallpox.
According to documents, smallpox virus was introduced into China by prisoners in the war during the reign of Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu in the early Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-57), and it was called "Lu Chuang". Later, in the process of spreading, it has various names: Tianxing spotted sore, Dengdou sore, pea sore, bean sore, spotted bean sore, bran bean sore, Tianxing bean sore, spotted sore, tiandou, Tianxing pox and epidemic disease.
In the long-term struggle against this virulent infectious disease, the people and doctors in China constantly explored and summarized various methods to prevent smallpox and alleviate the disease, and finally invented the human pox technique. According to records, as early as the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty (713-741), that is, the early reign of Li Longji, the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty, there was a record that "the Zhao family in the south of the Yangtze River began to spread the method of nasal vaccination". Wang Dan, a famous prime minister in the Northern Song Dynasty and a native of shenxian county today, all his sons died of smallpox, and then he gave birth to Wang Su ("All children suffer from smallpox, and later they have children"). In the first year of Xianping, Song Zhenzong (998), he invited the imperial doctor to vaccinate Wang Su. "He had a fever on the seventh day, and the pox had scabbed on the twelfth day." Wang Su survived from then on. The first monograph on smallpox and measles appeared in the Song Dynasty-Dong Ji’s Treatise on Children’s Spotted Rashes, and there were many medical books on smallpox in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the Ming Dynasty, a "Taiping vaccine" with less toxicity was formed, which was refined and refined by human body. It was named after Taiping County, Ningguo Prefecture. Taiping County is located in the south of Anhui, at the northern foot of Huangshan Mountain, and now it is huangshan district, Huangshan City.
In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the vaccination technology was quite perfect. To sum up, there are four main methods: the pox-dressing method, which uses the shirt of a child suffering from smallpox or uses pox pulp to dye the clothes, and puts them on the vaccinated person to make him infected, so as to cause mild symptoms; The pox pulp method, in which cotton is dipped in the pox pulp and stuffed into the nostrils of the vaccinated child, makes him infected and also has mild symptoms; Dry seedling method: dry the scab in the shade, then grind it and blow it into the nostrils of vaccinated children with silver tubes to prevent smallpox; Water seedling method: dry the scab in the shade, grind it into fine powder, mix it with water, dip it in cotton and stuff it into the nostrils of the vaccinated person to prevent smallpox.
Of these four methods, the pox coating method and the pox pulp method are relatively primitive, and the effect is only to alleviate the disease. Dry seedling method and water seedling method are more advanced, and the two methods use scab as vaccine, which is greatly improved in method, which is not only convenient to popularize, but also effective. Among them, the water seedling method is more advanced, cheaper and more effective than the dry seedling method.
Since the invention of dry seedling method and water seedling method, people are very particular about the selection and storage of acne scabs, and it is required to choose the best acne scabs with smooth red circles as vaccines. After the scab falls off, it should be wrapped with black paper and tightly sealed in a clean porcelain bottle. At the beginning, the vaccine used in the drought and water seedling method was "time seedling", that is, the scab that had just suffered from smallpox was actually infected with smallpox by artificial methods, which was more dangerous; In the future, the vaccine used in drought and water seedling method is "mature seedling", that is, the scab inoculated many times has greatly reduced its toxicity and greatly improved its safety after inoculation. Just as Zhu Yiliang in the Qing Dynasty brilliantly pointed out in the book "Heart Method of Vaccination": "The longer the seedlings are propagated, the clearer the promotion of drug power, the more mature the manual selection, the elimination of fire and poison, and the existence of essence, so there is no danger." This selection and cultivation method of human pox vaccine is completely consistent with the cultivation principle of modern vaccine, and China had this immune technology method as early as the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century. According to the famous acne doctor Ayla Zhang’s book "A New Book of Vaccination" in the early Qing Dynasty, "there are 89,000 people who vaccinate, but there are 20 or 30 people who can’t save them", that is, the success rate is over 99.6%, which shows that the success rate of the human pox method at that time was high.
Human pox was introduced to the west.
The invention of human pox greatly reduced the morbidity and mortality of smallpox in Chinese, and gradually spread abroad, which made outstanding contributions to reducing the morbidity and mortality of smallpox in all countries in the world. In the 17th century, after learning about China’s human pox law, Russia sent doctors to Beijing to study acne medicine in the 27th year of Kangxi in Qing Dynasty (1688), and "set up a business in Beijing".
Later, human pox vaccination was introduced from Russia to Central Asia and then to Turkey. Montagu, the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, witnessed the local people vaccinating their children against smallpox in Constantinople, and the effect was very good. Because her younger brother died of smallpox and she was infected with smallpox herself, she did not hesitate to vaccinate her children with human pox in 1717, and in this year she introduced human pox to Britain. At this time, smallpox was prevalent all over Europe, including Britain. According to statistics, 60 million people died of smallpox in Europe in the 18th century. With the support of the King of England, many vaccination hospitals were established, and Britain soon became the center of vaccination in Europe and even the world. All countries in Europe and America sent people to Britain to study vaccination technology, and the vaccination technology spread to France and continental European countries, India and the United States in 1721. When Washington led the American War of Independence, the United States of America was established because it successfully prevented the fighting capacity from weakening due to smallpox epidemic by vaccinating army soldiers with human pox.
Vaccination originated from human pox
At that time, doctors in the British Isles generally used human pox to prevent smallpox. In view of the fact that human pox caused a mild smallpox infection artificially, there were still some risks, so many doctors were still looking for a simpler, more effective and safer technology.
There is an English rural doctor, Jenner Jenner, who was originally a doctor who inoculated human pox. He felt its limitations in the practice of inoculating human pox and was bent on finding a better prevention method. In 1780, he discovered that different herpes from cow nipples could be transmitted to people, and one of them, the pus of herpes, could prevent smallpox. He called bovine herpes a virus. In 1796, he took a decisive step-the first trial of vaccinia on an 8-year-old child and achieved success. The next year, he submitted the test results in a written report to the Royal Society, which was rejected. In 1798, he wrote a book "Study on the Causes and Effects of Vaccinium Inoculation" and published it at his own expense.
Vaccinium surgery is simpler, safer and more effective than human pox surgery, and it is quickly popularized in all countries of the world. In 1805, vaccinia was introduced to China via Macau, and it soon became popular among the public instead of human pox. It is precisely because of this that western medicine gained a firm foothold among the people in China and developed rapidly. The rapid spread and successful promotion of vaccinia in China touched the inventor of vaccinia, Chenna, who said that Chinese seemed to trust vaccinia more than the British in his hometown. Due to the successful popularization of vaccinia, smallpox was eradicated nationwide in China in the 1960s. At the 37th World Health Assembly in 1980, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox was officially eliminated all over the world, which was the only infectious disease that was eliminated by human beings. The Encyclopedia of China pointed out: "The fact that vaccinia originated from human pox shows that the outstanding scientific invention of Chinese medicine human pox vaccination has contributed to the development of world medicine." Moreover, western medicine has sprouted the immunology theory of western medicine on the basis of China’s human pox operation. Needham, a member of the Royal Society, pointed out that China’s human pox operation is the "source of immunology" in the world.
(Source: Volkswagen Daily)
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