0:00
Hello. My name is Dr. Stanley Plotkin.
I am emeritus
professor of pediatrics
at the University of Pennsylvania,
and the senior editor
of the Vaccines textbook.
And I am going to talk to
you today about the history
of vaccines, which now goes
back many centuries, in fact.
0:29
So on my next slide, you have some
sources of information concerning
the history of vaccines, divided
according to whether they're brief,
medium size, or long.
The brief example is a chapter,
the first chapter from the Vaccines
textbook by my wife and myself.
The medium examples are
basically two books.
One listed is titled, Vaccines, A
Biography, edited by Artenstein.
And I also have a
book which is titled
History of Vaccine Development,
which is available from Springer.
The long history of vaccines is
a wonderful book by Herve Bazin,
which is published both
in French and in English,
and tells you everything
you ever wanted to know
about the history of vaccines.
1:35
The history of vaccination
goes back a long way.
However, the effect of
vaccination is beyond question.
As we said in the first edition
of the Vaccines textbook,
published in 1988, "The impact
of vaccination on the health
of the world's peoples
is hard to exaggerate.
With the exception of safe
water, no other modality
has had such a major
effect on mortality
reduction and population growth."
And that quotation, I
think, is indisputable.
It has been repeated often
in other publications,
usually without attribution,
but nevertheless it's
a universal truth.
The beginning of vaccination
goes back hundreds of years,
in a sense, because it began,
I think, because of the efforts
of kings and other
important people to resist
poisoning by taking small
amounts of common poisons
to build up resistance.
And so the idea of using a small
amount of something pathogenic
to protect against the
major effect of a pathogen
became a common belief.
