humanity was a lot braver / ingenious 200 years ago. today, people sit on their fat asses debating useless things, like whether human challenge trials are “ethical”:

At the end of the 18th century, smallpox was probably the scariest disease on Earth. It spread alarmingly quickly, and every cm of people’s skin, including their face, would erupt with 1000s upon 1000s of painful, pus-filled sores. Edward Jenner observed something strange, however: People who caught a related disease called cowpox never came down with its deadlier cousin. So in 1796, he began giving people cowpox intentionally, rendering them immune to smallpox and creating the first vaccine.

But the breakthrough introduced another dilemma: How could doctors deliver vaccines to people who needed them? The real trouble started when doctors tried to vaccinate people who were far away. The lymph could lose its potency traveling even the 350km from London to Paris, let alone to the Americas, where it was desperately needed: Smallpox outbreaks there were verging on apocalyptic, killing up to 50% of people who got the virus. Every so often threads of dried lymph did survive an ocean journey—a batch reached Newfoundland in 1800—but the lymph was typically rendered impotent after months at sea. Spain especially struggled to reach its colonies in Central and South America, so in 1803, health officials in the country devised a radical new method for distributing the vaccine abroad: orphan boys.

The plan involved putting 24 Spanish orphans on a ship. Right before they left for the colonies, a doctor would give 2 of them cowpox. After 10 days at sea, the sores on their arms would be nice and ripe. A team of doctors onboard would lance the sores, and scratch the fluid into the arms of 2 more boys. 10 days later, once those boys developed sores, a third pair would receive fluid, and so on.

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