One of the downsides of visiting Africa is the enormous number of diseases that can get you – as we’re passing through pretty much every strata of Africa, we need to protect against pretty much every disease I’ve ever heard of, except Japanese Encephalitis (I’d be surprised if I could get that outside of Japan…) and Smallpox.
The reason the latter is of no concern is that it is the first disease to have ever been wiped out from the whole planet, and I found out why the other day. Up to the 18th Century, doctors used to try and protect children from smallpox by cutting them, inserting a dried smallpox scar from a previous victim and hoping that would mildly infect them and they would develop immunity. The downside with this is you could also die. In 1796, a rural English doctor began investigating an old wives’ tale that if you had cowpox, a non-fatal disease, you could not catch smallpox. His research involved grabbing a farmhand, cutting them open and pouring in puss from another victim’s cowpox pustule. The farmhand, as expected, developed cowpox and subsequently recovered. At which point, the doctor, Edward Jenner, tried to infect him with smallpox in the method stated before. However, the boy did not fall ill and thus, vaccinations were born - so named after the Latin ‘vacca’, meaning cow.
So, it was armed (no pun intended) with this bit of knowledge, that I have valiantly been striding between various doctor’s surgeries and travel clinics to get all my vaccinations, safe in the knowledge that at least I won’t be cut open, and I definitely won’t develop the disease and die. So far, I’ve had tetanus, diphtheria, polio, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and the first of three rabies. So only meningitis, typhoid, cholera and two more rabies to go. Just think of the poor farmhand who made this all possible…
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| How I Feel At The Moment |
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