Vaccines are part of our modern world, but do you know what lies behind their discovery and use?

I knew that:

Immunization prevents between 2 and 3 million deaths a year?
According to the WHO, between 2 and 3 million deaths a year are prevented by vaccination against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and measles.

The first vaccine was developed before it was discovered that the culprit was a virus?
It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it's true, and it could lead us to discuss who came first: the egg or the chicken, had the development of vaccination and the concept of the virus not come about a century apart. Although the concept of the smallpox virus was unknown in 1796, the scientist Edward Jenner, through analysis and scientific research, created the first smallpox vaccine based on the fact that anyone who seemed to have had previous contact with the disease would not develop it again.

Some ancient civilizations in Asia around 1,000 years ago infected children with smallpox to create immunization?
It is believed that the first attempts to immunize children against certain diseases were made in India and China. These ancient civilizations would make a small cut on the arm and rub scabs from infected wounds or other materials infected with smallpox into the wound. In this way, even without understanding the rationale, they tried to create a response from the immune system and create immunity to the disease.

In the 18th century, given the already recognized importance of vaccination and the lack of distribution methods, Spain came up with a "creative" alternative...
In the 18th century, refrigeration methods did not yet exist, so the distribution of smallpox vaccines was very difficult. Spanish King Charles IV implemented a very creative alternative to get around this problem: 22 orphans were vaccinated, who then traveled to different regions and, from the blood of the immunized children, new vaccines were created for the local population.

We're not the only species to use collective immunization methods?
It's true, group immunity is essential and we all know it. What you may not know is that ants also rely on so-called "social immunization". If one ant is infected with a fungus, the others "lick" the infected insect to spread the infection throughout the colony, making them all immune to the fungus in question.

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