Bioinformatics for Vaccinology
Chapter One
Vaccines:
Their Place in History
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
-Marie Antoinette (1755-1793)
Smallpox in history
For the first hundred years or so, the story of vaccination was the story of smallpox.
Smallpox first appeared in remote antiquity, perhaps 10 thousand years ago when
humankind first embraced settled farming in preference to transhumance. It was,
many say, the most feared of all ancient diseases: smallpox killed 20-30% of those
who contracted it, disfiguring or blinding those that survived.
It has been suggested, primarily on the basis of extant historical evidence, that
virulent smallpox did not appear in Europe until the early modern era - most probably
during the seventeenth century - and gradually replaced an endemic and much
less virulent form of the disease. This transition seems to have occurred during a
series of erratic smallpox outbreaks during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
With more certainty we can say that smallpox's cas ... read full excerpt from Bioinformatics for Vaccinology ebook