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WonderWord origin

Vaccine comes from vacca, Latin for cow. In 1796 the English doctor Edward Jenner showed that material from cowpox, a mild disease caught from cows, could protect people against deadly smallpox. His Latin name for cowpox, variolae vaccinae, gave the word.

Etymology

LanguageHealth

The story behind the card

Country people had long noticed that milkmaids who caught cowpox seemed to escape smallpox. On 14 May 1796 Jenner tested the idea: he took fluid from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid, Sarah Nelmes, and scratched it into the arm of James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener. When Jenner later exposed the boy to smallpox, he did not fall ill. Jenner published his results in 1798. An older method, variolation, gave people a mild dose of smallpox itself; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had seen it practised in the Ottoman Empire and helped bring it to Britain in 1721. In 1881 Louis Pasteur proposed using vaccine for all such protective inoculations, in Jenner's honour. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980.

Türkçe oku
Aşının Batı dillerindeki adı vaccine, Latincede inek demek olan vacca'dan türedi. İngiliz hekim Edward Jenner 1796'da, ineklerden bulaşan hafif bir hastalık olan inek çiçeğinin insanları ölümcül çiçek hastalığından koruyabildiğini gösterdi. Sözcük, Jenner'ın inek çiçeğine verdiği Latince addan, variolae vaccinae'den gelir.

Köylüler, inek çiçeğine yakalanan sütçü kızların çiçek hastalığından kurtulduğunu çoktan fark etmişti. Jenner bu gözlemi 14 Mayıs 1796'da sınadı: Sütçü Sarah Nelmes'in elindeki inek çiçeği yarasından aldığı sıvıyı, bahçıvanının sekiz yaşındaki oğlu James Phipps'in koluna çizik açarak sürdü. Jenner daha sonra çocuğa çiçek hastalığı bulaştırmayı denediğinde Phipps hastalanmadı. Jenner sonuçlarını 1798'de yayımladı. Daha eski bir yöntem olan variolasyonda (çiçek aşılama) insanlara bilerek hafif bir çiçek hastalığı bulaştırılırdı. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu bu uygulamayı Osmanlı İstanbul'unda görmüş ve 1721'de İngiltere'ye taşınmasına öncülük etmişti. 1881'de Louis Pasteur, Jenner'ın anısına bütün koruyucu aşılar için vaccine sözcüğünün kullanılmasını önerdi. Çiçek hastalığının dünyadan silindiği 1980'de ilan edildi. Türkçedeki aşı sözcüğünün ise inekle bir ilgisi yoktur; aynı sözcük bir ağaca başka bir ağaçtan dal ya da göz eklemek için de kullanılır.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Vaccine
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