Ben Franklin's anti-vax tragic regrets.

[MoonRiver]

[Blue Owl]

1. For the Q-Anon crowd, the Founding Fathers have been replaced by the Foaming Fraudsters

[MoonRiver]

2. Any of them could be the next Franklin.

Amazing how this never enters their "minds."

[Hekate]

3. KnR

[Maraya1969]

4. According to the WHO the Smallpox vaccine wasn't developed until 1796

https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/smallpox-vaccines#:~:text=The%20smallpox%20vaccine%2C%20introduced%20by,successful%20vaccine%20to%20be%20developed.

"The history of smallpox holds a unique place in medicine. It was one of the deadliest diseases known to humans, and to date (2016) the only human disease to have been eradicated by vaccination. The smallpox vaccine, introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796, was the first successful vaccine to be developed. He observed that milkmaids who previously had caught cowpox did not catch smallpox and showed that inoculated vaccinia protected against inoculated variola virus."

[Silent3]

7. The meme (correct or not) says "inoculation", not vaccine

The two things are different, with inoculation being a precursor of vaccination.

[teach1st]

9. I think it's the difference between vaccine and inoculation

Benjamin Franklin, Smallpox Pamphleteer
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/library-treasures-benjamin-franklin-smallpox-pamphleteer

The Historical Medical Library at The College of Physicians is full of fascinating items, and we’ve run across many of them while developing the History of Vaccines website. One such item is a pamphlet written by Benjamin Franklin and an English doctor, outlining American and English experiences with inoculation against smallpox. This process, also called variolation, involved transferring some matter from a smallpox sore on a person with a mild case of the disease into a cut or scratch on the body of a healthy person. The usually mild local reaction would most often protect the inoculated person from contracting smallpox.

As you may have learned from our Smallpox Timeline, Franklin lost his four-year-old son to smallpox in 1736. He became an advocate of inoculation, arguing that although it was not without risk, it was far safer than natural infection.

In 1759, Franklin asked a friend, London physician William Heberden, to write a pamphlet outlining the process of inoculation, so that anyone could learn how to perform the operation. Franklin then wrote an introduction for the pamphlet, stating that Heberden paid for printing “a very large impression” of the pamphlet to be distributed for free in America. A copy of the pamphlet “Some Account Of the Success of Inoculation for the Small-Pox in England and America together with Plain Instructions, By which any Person may be enabled to perform the Operation, and conduct the Patient through the Distemper,” is in the Historical Medical Library.

The above was linked to in this 2015 Washington Post article:

Ben Franklin lost a son to smallpox. Here’s his sobering advice for parents worried about vaccines today.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/04/ben-franklin-lost-a-son-to-smallpox-heres-his-sobering-advice-to-parents-on-immunization/

[Maraya1969]

17. Well that is interesting. Thanks.

[catrose]

20. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (wife of the ambassador to Turkey) brought inoculation to England in 1721

She had her children inoculated and convinced the Royal family to do so as well, which helped popularize it.

[h2ebits]

22. The meme is correct. . . .

I just watched a Rocky Mountain PBS 4-part series on life expectancy called: "Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer" I highly recommend the series if you can view it. Perhaps you can search RMPBS.org and pull it up for viewing.

Part 1 is about the eradication of smallpox and how it came about. Initially, two side-by-side small cuts were made in the arm and the person was inoculated with smallpox. This method was brought to America from Africa by a black man and used here until Edward Jenner noticed the milkmaids and developed the smallpox vaccine based on cowpox.

[BeerBarrelPolka]

5. Well

The smallpox vaccine came out in 1796.

[Silent3]

8. But inoculation existed before vaccination n/t

[BeerBarrelPolka]

11. But

The meme incorrectly states vaccine. So it's a bullshit internet meme.

[Silent3]

12. I'm making no claim about the validity of the Franklin quote...

...just that it is indeed possible that he said the quoted words in 1788, about an event in 1736. The meme does not put the word "vaccine" or "vaccination" in Franklin's mouth.

The title of the meme itself is likely just another example of failing to distinguish between inoculation and vaccination, but the jist of the meme could still hold as a valid example of Franklin recognizing (with regret) the less risky of two options.

[BeerBarrelPolka]

13. Agreed

[wryter2000]

18. The quote says innoculation

Whoever wrote the title of the post mistook it to mean vaccination.

[Volaris]

6. The advancement of scientific achievements meant a very great deal to the Founders.

It's why we have patent laws written into the Constitution. The GOP would do well to remember this, as well as communicating to their mouth-drooling base that one of the reasons that we actually dont still now bow to the Queen is that General Washington ordered the attempted vaccination of all his soldiers against smallpox, on only the IDEA that the biology was sound.

These modern anti-vaxxers would be quite happy to bend the fucking knee if asked or ordered, let's not let them forget that.

[TheBlackAdder]

10. I checked The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by John Bigelow, it's in there.

.

https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=14014054&searchType=1&permalink=y

Link: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006540018


Provides several sites to view, here is one of them:

Harvard link: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044025029661&view=1up&seq=24

It's on Document Page#276, or Book Page #244.

.

[Silent3]

14. +1 n/t

[h2ebits]

23. +1

[Midnight Writer]

15. We could use the wisdom and leadership of a Ben Franklin today.

[lagomorph777]

16. Wow. It's easy to forget that vaccines are not new technology.

Though of course, the latest versions are made in new ways, and are far more refined and safer.

[getagrip_already]

19. and what is really amazing is that the doctors of the day.....

Didn't know what a virus was, or how the vaccines/inoculations worked. Just that they did.

[lagomorph777]

21. Freaking amazing. I think our ancestors were smarter than we are.

[KPN]

24. Here's an interesting read on smallpox inoculations in the early 18th century. Hard to imagine

that a thinker like Ben Franklin was an anti-vaxxer.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/special-edition-on-infectious-disease/2014/the-fight-over-inoculation-during-the-1721-boston-smallpox-epidemic/