The Pfizer vaccine origins in traditional Smallpox inoculation methods from the Ottoman Empire
Not only did a Turkish couple play a major role in developing the Pfizer vaccine, but Turkey could arguably be credited with being the first to discover the practice
The founders of BioNTech, partners with Pfizer in developing the world’s most successful Coronavirus vaccine are the Turkish scientists Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, who have devoted their lives to developing immunotherapy treatments in the field of oncology and infectious diseases.
The first-ever vaccination technique came from Turkey
Turkey was the first to discover the practice. Smallpox plagued humanity for over a thousand years, killing roughly three out of every 10 people infected with the disease. In Turkish tradition people would deliberately infect themselves and their children with pus from smallpox survivors to ensure they developed immunity to the fatal effects of the disease. This method of inoculation had been applied for centuries against smallpox in Ottoman lands.
Smallpox, which was one of the most terrible epidemics in human history, was among the primary causes of mass deaths in the 18th century. A severe and contagious disease that leaves scars on the face, and bodily bumps filled with pus, it killed three out of 10 infected people while and caused severe health problems and irreparable damage to the skin in the rest. In the 20th century alone, smallpox is estimated to have killed 300 million people and 500 million in the last 100 years of the virus’s existence before it was eradicated in 1979.
While English doctor Edward Jenner is cited as having created the first vaccination at the end of the 18th century, it is widely acknowledged that his finding came as a result of scientific observation of a practice that was brought to England from modern-day Turkey. One such sufferer of smallpox was Lady Montagu, who arrived in Turkey in 1716 with her husband Lord Montagu, who served as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
The East with its vast medical knowledge at the time and dominance in the field of sciences that lasted for centuries, had discovered the vaccine for smallpox hundreds of years before the West. When Europe rediscovered the cure, it was a victory claimed by the West.
Antivaxxers are not a new phenomenon as the above illustrates, and eventually they became a very small minority.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was perhaps the most famous among many children who survived smallpox in the West thanks to this method.
And today, thanks to vaccines, it remains completely eradicated. This technique has also enabled the production of vaccines that cured, and continue to cure, many diseases.