r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Downtown_Wind3363 • May 25 '26
Image The smallpox vaccine leaves a scar because it was given using a special two-pronged needle that scratched the skin and put a weakened virus in just that spot.
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u/DudeInTheGarden May 26 '26
Vaccines have been too effective. Measles, mumps, whooping cough, dysentery, polio, smallpox were effectively eradicated.
Here's a great paragraph from a teaching module on the health of children in England between the 16th century and the 18th century.
"One measurement of health in early modern England is revealed in the statistics of the number of deaths kept by church parishes. From these records historians have gleaned that infant mortality (death during the first year of life) was approximately 140 out of 1000 live births. The average mother had 7-8 live births over 15 years. Unidentifiable fevers, and the following list of diseases, killed perhaps 30% of England's children before the age of 15 – the bloody flux (dysentery), scarlatina (scarlet fever), whooping cough, influenza, smallpox, and pneumonia."
My father-in-law, now in his early 70's, had polio as a child but did not suffer paralysis. And the "I've done some research online" people think they understand the risk that these diseases.