Welcome back to our series
on objects of crisis. During this
pandemic we've decided to look into our
collection and to find objects
that inform us about how people in the
past have tackled major crisis, major
experiences of threat, of danger, of a lethal threat
and how they've come on top of it, how
they've prevailed
and sometimes how they've faltered. Today it's my great privilege
to welcome my colleague Carl Heron
who is the head of the center for
scientific research at the British Museum. Carl what is the
object you have chosen, what is the story
behind that object?
I want through the lens of the British
Museum
to explore the disease of smallpox
and in particular some of the early
interventions, some of the early
approaches that were
introduced in order to protect
individuals from the ravages of the
disease. Smallpox was endemic on the planet for
hundreds of years and the disease
even in the 20th century it's been
estimated that 300 million people
died, at least 300 million people died
from the disease of smallpox
and it's a disease which has been
eradicated now so in in one sense it's been one of the
most important global health success
stories.
The the world health organization (WHO)
declared that smallpox had been
eradicated in 1980 the last case of smallpox was
reported in the 1970s.
So how does that impact on the British
Museum, so the object that I've chosen
is a report and it's a report that was
published by the Royal College of
Physicians
in 1806 and the title of the report is
on the
cow pock or cow pox as we would probably
know it
today or vaccinations and this was a a
report published on a single side of
paper just 21 short paragraphs
that was authored
on the advice of parliament and the
crown to report on the
advantages and some of the risks
and the benefits of vaccination.
Now vaccination was a new term it had only been
introduced several years previously
and it goes as follows
'vaccination appears to be in general perfectly safe the disease occasioned by it is very
mild and it seldom prevents those
under it from following their usual occupations.'
So at first glance this is not an object of
crisis
this is an object of well-being,
of promoting human health and a safe method of
protecting individuals from
the ravages of smallpox.
The reason why I think the report should be seen as an object of crisis
is that it goes on to counter and
condemn
certain attitudes towards vaccination,
it mentions the imperfect testimonies of
the few, opposes the mistakes of ignorant men
and willful misrepresentation lessening
the confidence in the safety of vaccination.
The practice of vaccination had only
just been introduced and within a few
years the Royal College of Physicians
felt compelled to prepare a report to try and
counter an anti-vaccination stance and what had preceded vaccination
was that any method that researchers and 
medical doctors
had started to develop we can actually
go back to
Hans Sloane's was responsible for the
foundation of the British Museum
and he wrote an article in 1736
and it was called an account of
inoculation so there was a method prior to
vaccination called inoculation specifically it was called
varialation and that was specific to smallpox
inoculation and the the article that he wrote in
1736 was very heavily influenced by
Lady Mary Wortley Montague who had
contracted smallpox herself in 1715
and she traveled to Constantinople
and in Constantinople she witnessed this
inoculation for smallpox taking place
and it was widespread throughout the
Middle East, India and China but unknown in the West,
so unknown in in Britain and she
described in a letter
and I shall just quote a little from the
letter that she wrote in April 1717
'There is a set of old women who make it
their business to perform the operation
the woman comes with a nutshell full of
the matter
of the best sort of smallpox and asks
what vein you pleased to have
opened she immediately rips open
that you offer her with a large needle
and puts into the vein
as much matter as can lie upon the head
of her needle'
so this method of inoculation variation
was the direct transfer of smallpox
perhaps from one of those infected
pustules directly inserting that to a healthy
individual now that would that would create a
localized or mild infection in that individual
but the immune response, unknown at the
time of course, the immune response would
cause a reaction and the body would fight that localized
and mild infection and produce an immunity
against the full ravages of the disease it's a
very interesting aspect of this that
it's been a practice in as you said
in the Middle East in
the Ottoman empire, in India and China
widespread but not in Europe in that
it took that moment of transfer of
knowledge from a person who had suffered through
this disease, to a distinguished surgeon and
and scholar who would then
publish this and make it known amongst
the the learned, the learned societies of his own region
Yes, indeed and so Lady Montague was very
much responsible for bringing that to the attention there
were others of of course there were
other publications
in fact Sloane's public publication his
article
wasn't actually published until after he
died it was published in 1755
but as physician to the crown he had a
very important role to play in
in advocating for inoculation throughout
Britain what is the difference between
inoculation
and vaccination so for vaccination we we
have Edward
Jenner to thank in 1796 and he's
called the father of vaccination
and and Jenner was aware of a widely
held belief
that that individuals with cow pox
did not go on to contract smallpox
so cowpox was a disease that could be
picked up through contact with with
cattle so particularly milking of cattle
handling the udders for example one
could contract cow pots
but cowpox is a very mild condition
it did lead to pustules on the
hands particularly around the areas of contact
but it was a very mild disease and it
didn't transmit between humans
so there are very, very few people who
had a cow pox
but what Jenner decided to do rather than
the direct insertion of smallpox matter
into a cut arm for example he decided to
take material
lymph or or the infected pus from a
cow poxpustule
on the hand of of of Sarah Nelmes the 
daughter of the farmer in
Gloucestershire Jenner was a country
surgeon in Gloucestershire
he inserted the the the cowpox material
into the arm of
James Phipps an eight-year-old boy he
then
developed a mild infection through the
the cowpox but
Jenner several weeks later then
inoculated
by variolation smallpox into the same
boy and he did not go on to develop any
infection whatsoever from the smallpox
however localized or mild.
Jenner struggled to get his paper
published he eventually published it
himself in 1798 and
the practice was was embedded it
became much more
widely used after that date but
in 1806 the Royal College of Physicians
was compelled
to make these counter arguments against
those who were opposed to vaccination
Where would they where could we get
hold of those
arguments or the
let's say the the fears, the fantasies
of those who were against vaccination?
The opponents to vaccination took on a
number of different forms, some doctors were
opposed to vaccinations because they had
been practicing variolation throughout
their careers so that was one, there were sanitation
questions this is in the days before
sterilization, before
antibiotics, so there was certainly, in
cases where there was carelessness or
ignorance, there may be
cross-contamination
many of the vaccinations took place in
smallpox
hospitals for example where smallpox was
rife
and therefore there were concerns about
the the health status
but one of the points that the the
report makes and it's paragraph 18
'Publications with prints and
representations of diseases
of a frightful and monstrous appearance
have been of late
widely circulated and they have lessened
the confidence of many persons in the
safety and security of vaccination'
one of one of the most famous is by
James Gilray and it's called the Cow Pock or the
wonderful effects of the new inoculation
and it's a pretty awful scene it shows
an individual a physician and it's
probably Edward Jenner and he gazes rather dispassionately
he looks really disinterested as he cuts
into the arm of a frightened looking
woman and a boy to one side of of Jenner holds
a container, a bucket full of 'Vaccine
pock hot from the cow'
and around this scene so in the
foreground and behind
Jenner and the frightened looking woman
individuals who are already
vaccinated and from these individuals
from their arms and from
other parts of their body are sprouting
cows.
it's rather brutal
it's rather brutal it is and there are many
of these actually that were in
circulation at the time according to one researcher
of Gilray's satire and and again a quote
'he is  simultaneously portraying the anxieties of the opponent's of vaccination
whilst ridiculing their ill-informed and
histrionic ideas'
There is one aspect which we haven't
really addressed here and that might be
interesting for our listeners
small pox was eradicated through
vaccine,
through vaccination, it didn't go away by
itself
the Spanish flu you said if i remember
correctly Carl
mutated into something less
virulent, less lethal, so these are
two possible
paths a pandemic can take.
Indeed and the coronavirus the genetic sequence is changing so scientists have already
been able to understand some genetic
changes
in the sequences between the early
manifestation of coronavirus and some of
the subsequent cases of where the virus has been uh
sequenced so it's RNA in the case of
Coronavirus all influenza viruses
RNA so it's changing but we don't
know what the impact of those changes are yet
it's too early to tell whether we might be there might be
mutations that lead to less virulent
sources
or indeed more virulence
as a bio-archaeologist
the question of diseases and the spread
of diseases
and the question of how you can detect
them
is is certainly a very important field
of research
but this there's a really rich area for
research and museum collections will
play a very significant role here in ancient
pathogenic DNA and RNA depending on
the type of virus but also bacteria
Yersinia Pestis responsible for the
plague bubonic plague
and ancient pathogen research into
both DNA and RNA has come up with some
spectacular findings
from the bones and teeth of humans
from their human remains in the museum
collections but also from objects.
So bioarchaeology will play an
increasing role
and the museum collections that we have
curated
across the world  will really
inform
our understanding of the evolution and
the transmission of disease, it's an area
for rich research potential.
Talking to you Carl, has certainly helped me to understand those
those implications and and the
potential that
those collections across the globe
and the people working on those
collections really hold in store for us
and for future developments so thank
you very much indeed for sharing that
with us
that's very illuminating.
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www.britishmuseum.org/donate Thank you very much indeed.
