So did "variolation" the method Washington used to inoculate his troops.
How Crude Smallpox Inoculations Helped George Washington Win the WarBut immunization in the 1770s was not what it’s like today with a single injection and a low risk of mild symptoms. Edward Jenner didn’t even develop his revolutionary cowpox-based vaccine for smallpox until 1796. The best inoculation technique at Washington’s disposal during the Revolutionary War was a nasty and sometimes fatal method called “variolation.”
“An inoculation doctor would cut an incision in the flesh of the person being inoculated and implant a thread laced with live pustular matter (of smallpox) into the wound,” explains Fenn. “The hope and intent was for the person to come down with smallpox. When smallpox was conveyed in that fashion, it was usually a milder case than it was when it was contracted in the natural way.”
Variolization still had a case fatality rate of 5 to 10 percent. And even if all went well, inoculated patients still needed a month to recover. The procedure was not only risky for the individual patient, but for the surrounding population. An inoculee with a mild case might feel well enough to walk around town, infecting countless others with potentially more serious infections.
The fatality rate sounds like a total lie.
In any event I don’t believe it.
The cases were mild because there were known at the time to be at least two strains of the virus, one of which was mild. That’s the one, through the pustules of which they would draw the thread that would later be placed under the skin of the healthy person (often a Continental Army recruit) to have them get mildly sick and recover in two weeks.
Interesting.
Yet, given the “major” strain of smallpox has a CFR about 30%, that might’ve been a risk to take.
John Adams did it too.
It is amazing all that had to go right for us to gain our independence from England. Young people who want socialism are so brainwashed … and spoiled.