LYRICFLUENT
LYRICFLUENTHow We Conquered The Deadly Smallpox Virus Lyrics by Addison Anderson Addison Anderson
Below, you will find the lyrics for How We Conquered The Deadly Smallpox Virus by Addison Anderson.
10,000 years ago
A deadly virus arose in northeastern Africa
The virus spread through the air
Attacking the skin cells
Bone marrow
Spleen
And lymph nodes of its victims
The unlucky infected developed fevers
Vomiting
And rashes
30% of infected people died
During the second week of infection
Survivors bore scars and scabs
For the rest of their lives
Smallpox had arrived
In 1350 B.C., the first smallpox epidemics
Hit during the Egypt-Hittite war
Egyptian prisoners spread smallpox
To the Hittites
Which killed their king
And devastated his civilization
Insidiously, smallpox made its way around the world
Via Egyptian merchants
Then through the Arab world with the Crusades
And all the way to the Americas
With the Spanish and Portuguese conquests
Since then, it has killed billions of people
With an estimated 300 to 500 million people
Killed in the 20th century alone
But smallpox is not unbeatable
In fact, the fall of smallpox started
Long before modern medicine
It began all the way back in 1022 A.D
According to a small book, called
'The Correct Treatment of Small Pox,'
A Buddhist nun living in a famous mountain
Named O Mei Shan
In the southern providence of Sichuan
Would grind up smallpox scabs
And blow the powder into nostrils of healthy people
She did this after noticing
That those who managed to survive smallpox
Never got it again
And her odd treatment worked
The procedure, called variolation
Slowly evolved
And by the 1700's
Doctors were taking material from sores
And putting them into healthy people
Through four or five scratches on the arm
This worked pretty well
As inoculated people would not get reinfected
But it wasn't foolproof
Up to three percent of people
Would still die after being exposed to the puss
It wasn't until English physician Edward Jenner
Noticed something interesting about dairy maids
That we got our modern solution
At age 13, while Jenner was apprentice
To a country surgeon and apothecary
In Sodbury, near Bristol
He heard a dairy maid say
'I shall never have smallpox, for I have had cowpox
I shall never have an ugly, pockmarked face.'
Cowpox is a skin disease
That resembles smallpox and infects cows
Later on, as a physician
He realized that she was right
Women who got cowpox didn't develop
The deadly smallpox
Smallpox and cowpox viruses are from the same family
But when a virus infects an unfamiliar host
In this case cowpox infecting a human
It is less virulent
So Jenner decided to test
Whether the cowpox virus could be used
To protect against smallpox
In May 1796, Jenner found a young dairy maid
Sarah Nelmes
Who had fresh cowpox lesions on her hand and arm
Caught from the utters of a cow named Blossom
Using matter from her pustules
He inoculated James Phipps
The eight-year-old son of his gardener
After a few days of fever and discomfort
The boy seemed to recover
Two months later, Jenner inoculated the boy again
This time with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion
No disease developed
And Jenner concluded that protection was complete
His plan had worked
Jenner later used the cowpox virus
In several other people
And challenged them repeatedly with smallpox
Proving that they were immune to the disease
With this procedure
Jenner invented the smallpox vaccination
Unlike variolation, which used actual smallpox virus
To try to protect people
Vaccination used the far less dangerous cowpox virus
The medical establishment
Cautious then as now
Deliberated at length over his findings
Before accepting them
But eventually vaccination was gradually accepted
And variolation became prohibited
In England in 1840
After large vaccination campaigns
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries
The World Health Organization certified
Smallpox's eradication in 1979
Jenner is forever remembered
As the father of immunology
But let's not forget the dairy maid Sarah Nelmes
Blossom the cow
And James Phipps
All heroes in this great adventure of vaccination
Who helped eradicate smallpox
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