An amazing discovery

When my Dad died in 2008 I began tracing my family tree, just to keep my mind occupied in my spare time.

Although I grew up in the far north of England, my Grandmother’s maiden name was Rayner, and her family came from a small village called Bocking, near Braintree in Essex. The parish records had all been scanned and put on line by the Essex County Records department, which made my research so much easier. Then, one day, as I searched the pages looking for details of a relative I stumbled upon an amazing discovery.

At the end of the page for 1796 the local vicar had added this note to the register:

Some hundreds were inoculated this year & many had the small pox in the natural way.

Not one died.

Smallpox was one of the deadliest diseases known to humans. It was generally well known that people who had smallpox once could not catch it again, but catching it the first time could be fatal or could leave the victim with terrible marks on their face.

Edward Jenner was an eccentric scientist who built and flew his own hot air balloons. He noticed that milkmaids got blisters on their hands but they never caught smallpox. He reasoned that ‘Cow Pox’ was a weaker version of smallpox. He took some puss from the hands of a Gloucester milkmaid called Sarah Nelmes and used it to vaccinate an 8 year old boy called James Phipps, who got ill, then got better and never caught smallpox.

This was the amazing discovery. Vaccination had been invented!

At first many people were suspicious, but within just four years this amazing discovery was spreading right across Europe. That small village where my ancestors lived was in the very first wave of vaccinations back in 1796. Just down the road, in Braintree there were no vaccinations and dozens died from an epidemic.

 200 years later, on May 8^th 1980, the World Health Organisation announced that smallpox had been completely eradicated, the greatest single achievement in the history of public health.

So where does that leave me?

If one of my ancestors had died from smallpox I would never have existed, so it’s possible that vaccination saved my life, back there in Bocking, 150 years before I was even born.

The story doesn’t end there.

My mother had a small white scar right on the front of her throat. As a child she had caught a disease called diphtheria which causes the throat to close up, and the victim dies from suffocation. In the 1920s the treatment for diphtheria was for the doctor to make a cut in the throat and push a breathing tube in, that allowed my Mum to breathe for a few days while she fought off the infection. I never had to worry about diphtheria in my own lifetime because I was vaccinated.

At primary school, in the early 1960s, I had a classmate with a withered arm. He was a lovely looking little boy with curly blonde hair and blue eyes, but his left arm just hung there limp inside his jacket, because he had caught polio when he was a baby.

Polio is carried by dirty drinking water. It causes paralysis and also brain damage through meningitis. When I was about seven years old we were all vaccinated for it. There were no needles for this one, just a sugar lump with the vaccine on it, and nobody refused a free sugar lump.

That was the world I grew up in. Our parents knew all about those nasty diseases, but they put their trust in vaccination.

So here I am, an old man now, but still fit and healthy. I worked as a teacher for 42 years with never a single day off sick and I credit that to medical science, to the protective shield which modern medicine has built around us. I think it’s obvious that I support the covid vaccination program and I will be having my jab as soon as I am offered it.

The hidden danger

But there’s a hidden danger that we all need to be aware of.

Some people will refuse the vaccine, for a variety of reasons, but mainly because of false information being spread on social media.

Normally we British are pretty tolerant people. We don’t mind if our neighbours have different views on politics, religion, food & drink and even football teams. It’s good to have diversity. But if people refuse to get vaccinated they are providing a place where the virus can hide, and that gives it time to mutate, to grow stronger and more dangerous. Then it strikes back.

Do your duty, my friends, get the vaccination, but more than that, try to set an example. Tell people that it makes sense to do things properly. Show people that you trust the scientists, the doctors and the nurses. When others see you walking in the light it increases the chance that they will follow.

Looking forward to seeing you all, healthy and strong when this is over.

Bruce Johnson

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