From the last two chapters, we already know immune system is very important, is with us every day, and also some basic omponents in the immune system. Today, I will teach a little bit about the history of immunology, especially focus on the very early experience of immunology research. So, the first milestone actually came from long time ago in 16th century, in China, that people are trying to fight against smallpox. Those is very very deadly infection. So the basic concept at that time is very very important, that is we are thinking about whether we can cure a poisoned person with those poison itself. Here is the deadly disease called smallpox. This disease is caused by infection with virus, those onset is very very dangerous because it can cause a very high fever, then follows by a rash characterized by firm, deep seated vesicles in our skin, and the total fatality rate of this disease is about 1/3, so that is a very very dangerous disease. In the 16th century, in China, already been documented to use some kind of old vaccine ways to deal with this disease, is basically using some old infections then to re-infect a new person and then when those kind of pass to make it very weak is basically starting in the 16th century in China is already been documented in Ge Hong’s book then those viruses became weak, and then to get vaccine to the new person when those kind of viruses get weak they can still infect people but not that important disease but those people can get immunity in this process that’s also very weak, very old ways, you can see those kind of process is basically very similar as the live attenuated vaccine, I will introduce later on. And also another very famous English doctor developed a cowpox vaccine, that means we can use cowpox to get infected to another person, to against the later-on human smallpox infection, this doctor called Edward Jenner, so it’s very very famous in the immune study, in the immunology history, he also wrote a book called Vaccination. Lots of paintings, the west paintings documented this historical process, that’s basically the doctor Edward using this cowpox to vaccine, to infect the people, and then those people can get immunity against the smallpox. Here are some pictures from my Friend Professor Guangjie Chen ok, that’s the Edward Jenner Museum, you can see this house is where Edward Jenner lived at that time, and then you can see they have a logo called “DANGER! SMALLPOX! KEEP OUT”. I think it should be the early isolation house, And then after many many years efforts, we already developed efficient vaccines to fight against this smallpox, in 1980s, we get rid of this kind of infection worldwide. So, basically here is some reports that said “Smallpox is Dead”. That is a long history to fight against this kind of dangerous disease, After a long time, we can see the WHO declares “OK, there is no smallpox in this world”. Thinking about, at the very beginning is 1801, Edward Jenner became to doing research to try to fight with this disease, and after several centuries, we finally get rid of this. In 1977, here is the last patient, he was found in Somalia. So, that’s documented the last one still suffered with this disease. In 1979, smallpox was gone from this world. So, this country doctor the English country doctor Edward Jenner we could say that this doctor changed the world with immunology, with immunology knowledge So, that’s why we recognize Jenner as the father of immunology so this subject is basically the science of our body’s defense against invading bugs and chemicals So, we have worked very hard to develop many many working vaccines to get rid of lots of disease from our world. Hopefully, the next one we get rid is the COVID-19. A lots of countries worldwide suffer from this infection. Hopefully, we can have the vaccine for this infection as soon as possible. In this chapter, I introduce some very early research experience about immunology. In the next chapter, I will give you more introductions about what is the experimental days for immunology research how the immunology theory is developed
