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.
Thank you for listening if you liked it please subscribe and if you can please donate to
www.britishmuseum.org/donate Thank you very much indeed.