Example research essay topic: 18 Th Century Edward Jenner - 401 words

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Did Jenner Really Make A Breakthrough In Did Jenner Really Make A Breakthrough In The Fight Against Disease? In the 18 th century, medical knowledge was still quite basic with very few advances since the middle-ages. The biggest advances had come from Versailles, Pare and Harvey, but these advances were just in knowledge of the human body, not in the treatment of disease. The main treatments of disease were based on the four humours still and the most common was bleeding. Smallpox was a huge problem in the 18 th?

century because it was fatal, contagious and incurable. None of the treatments based of the four humours would work. The first attempts to cure Smallpox were in China where scabs where taken from victims of smallpox, ground up and blown up the patients nose. This cure was very unreliable as there are two strains of smallpox and if the most virulent stain was given to the patient, there was a 30 % chance of death. In 1721, a smallpox epidemic broke out in Britain and the Chinese method of violation was used to inoculate several children but it was not widely accepted. Edward Jenner was born on 17 th April 1749.

In 1756 Edward Jenner under went violation and nearly died of its side-effects. When he was 13, he was apprenticed to a surgeon for 7 years. After hearing about the idea that milkmaids didnt get smallpox, but suffered from the harmless cowpox, Jenner became interested in finding a safe vaccination for Smallpox. ? On 14 th May 1796, Jenner vaccinated an 8 year old boy, James Phipps, with material from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid, Sarah Names.

James developed cowpox but after a couple of weeks it had gone. Jenner then infected James with smallpox. To his surprise James did not catch the infection. Jenner's cure for smallpox did not catch on, with people believing that a human could not be cured by an animal and that they might develop characteristics of cows if they had the vaccination. Eventually, Jenner's method was accepted and vaccination against smallpox went ahead.

Jenner's discovery was a breakthrough in that he lead the way for other doctors and scientists to find cures for many other diseases. Unfortunately, because Jenner did not know how his vaccination worked, it was only until Pasteur linked disease to microbes that new vaccinations started appearing.

Research essay sample on 18 Th Century Edward Jenner