I Became A Genius Of The French Royal Family [EN]: Chapter 13

Vaccine (1)

After the storm passed, the room fell silent for a moment.

Guiyoten and Jenner, belatedly realizing their disgraceful behavior, were trying to avoid eye contact.

It seemed both of them would go home and kick their blankets hard.

In times like these, acting as if nothing happened is the best way to be considerate.

“Now that everyone has broken the ice, shall we get down to business? First, I’d like to check your knowledge. How much do you know about the existing treatments for smallpox?”

Though it was childish, these intellectuals immediately understood my intention.

Guiyoten was the first to shake his head with a nonchalant expression, as if nothing had happened.

“As far as I know, there is no special treatment for smallpox other than simply praying for it to heal. Everything that has been said before was just plausible fraud or superstition.”

“No, not all of it was fraud. There were methods that had some effect.”

Jenner countered in a serious tone, unlike before.

Guiyoten, and everyone else’s attention, focused on Jenner.

“Um… there’s a method called inoculation, invented in the East. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who stayed in the Ottoman Empire, brought it to England and introduced it. Haven’t you all heard of it?”

“Inoculation? Is that the one where you absorb pus or scabs from a smallpox patient into the body to get a mild case of smallpox in advance as a preventive measure?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

People of this era did not yet know the exact transmission route of the virus or the process of antibody formation.

Proper preventive medicine and immunology were still a long way off.

But even so, the intellectuals of the modern era were by no means fools.

Even if they didn’t know exactly why it happened, they knew about immune responses empirically.

Strangely enough, there are diseases in this world that you rarely get again once you’ve had them.

Measles and smallpox were prime examples.

Inoculation was one of the methods of preventing smallpox using that principle.

As Guiyoten said, it was based on the principle of acquiring immunity to smallpox by deliberately contracting a mild case of it.

However, inoculation, which was transmitted from the East to England, did not spread widely in Europe.

Doubts were constantly raised as to whether it was really effective.

Guiyoten, as well as the young Lavoisier, who was well-versed in science, were negative about inoculation.

“But are you sure it’s effective? I thought it was concluded to be a superstition.”

“It’s not ineffective. In fact, after suffering from mild smallpox, you don’t get smallpox again. However, even though it’s mild smallpox, it’s still smallpox… there’s a considerable chance of death.”

“Specifically, how much?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly. I only know that if you inoculate 100 people, there will be some deaths…”

“The mortality rate when inoculated is about 2 percent.”

When I briefly added an explanation, Jenner agreed that it would be around that much.

“That’s not bad… no. If there’s a 2 percent chance of sending a perfectly healthy person to their grave, I can’t say it’s not bad. I wouldn’t get the procedure myself.”

“I agree. The current population of Paris is about 500,000, so if we implement inoculation here, it means more than 10,000 people will die. Even if this prevents smallpox, I would never voluntarily get it. If they try to force it, there might be a riot.”

They were right.

Even though inoculation was effective in preventing smallpox, it was not widely practiced in Europe because the risk was too great.

If this method had really spread widely, the royal family and nobles would not have died in droves every time smallpox broke out.

Even with vaccines, people are anxious if the side effects cause the death of only a few people per million.

But 2 deaths per 100 people, not 1 million?

Of course, it can only be treated as a defective product with no value as a vaccine.

But that doesn’t mean it’s completely meaningless.

The reason is that just knowing the principle of inoculation roughly makes it easy to understand my explanation that will follow.

“As Lavoisier said, the side effects are too great to use inoculation as it is. But at least we can confirm one important fact: if our body adapts to smallpox, we won’t get it again. All future discussions will stem from here.”

“Ah, I see. So, the method that you discovered is not to treat smallpox, but to prevent it from happening. Come to think of it, you only said that you could overcome smallpox, but you never said that you would treat it.”

As Lavoisier said, I have never said that I would treat smallpox.

However, because the concept of a vaccine was not properly established in this era, I just spoke vaguely.

And now, judging that the preparation was perfectly finished, I distributed all the prepared materials to everyone.

“This is a rough record of the number of smallpox patients and the distribution of epidemics that have occurred in France and its neighboring countries over the past few years. Because rumors spread so quickly, this kind of data comes out right away.”

“If smallpox breaks out somewhere, the rumors spread right away, so it can’t be helped.”

The three of them looked through the data I gave them with a somber expression.

It was not a systematically analyzed, high-density data like in modern times, but just a rough estimate, so most of it was content they already knew.

“The number of people who die from smallpox is at least hundreds of thousands to millions every year in Europe alone… It is estimated that there is no constant rule in the cycle of epidemics. And looking at the even distribution from Africa to Russia to the New World, it doesn’t seem to be greatly affected by the climate. After all, it can only be expressed as a great disaster.”

“Most intellectuals will think so. In fact, in the case of the New World, the population was reduced to a fraction as smallpox spread. Some islands even had their indigenous people completely wiped out by a single outbreak of smallpox.”

It was the story of an entire people disappearing from this earth because of one epidemic.

Jenner shuddered and voiced the doubts everyone had.

“If inoculation is too dangerous to use widely, then… is there really a proper method?”

I gave him the answer right away so that the anxiety wouldn’t grow any bigger.

“Of course, there is. But everyone, this may sound like a random question, but have you heard the rumor that girls who milk cows are often beautiful?”

Guiyoten made a dumbfounded expression at the rather absurd question.

“Are women who milk cows pretty? Why are you suddenly talking about that…”

“It may seem absurd, but it’s very important. Have you heard of it?”

“Well, I don’t know about other countries, but isn’t that a famous rumor that has been around in France since ancient times?”

“Yes, I remember hearing that too.”

Not only Guiyoten, but also Lavoisier was in a tone of saying what are you talking about now.

It is an old rumor that does not even need to be confirmed.

It was Jenner who showed a reaction that it was rather strange.

“Is there such a saying in France too? That’s amazing. There has been such a saying in England for a long time.”

Not only England.

The rumor that women who milk cows have outstanding beauty was spread not only in France and England, but throughout Europe.

This is not a groundless rumor.

In fact, women who milk cows on farms commonly possessed the most important of the conditions for beauty.

It was clean skin.

In Europe, where it was easy to get pockmarks from smallpox, it was not easy to maintain clean skin.

So why is the skin of women who milk cows clean?

I showed the three of them additional data that would allow them to easily guess the reason.

“I investigated several farms in France where smallpox broke out and caused numerous casualties. If you look at this, you will know why I suddenly asked such a thing.”

The villages written on the paper had in common that they had suffered near-annihilation damage due to smallpox.

Jenner, who was checking the rough personal details of the survivors with a dark complexion, was the first to notice something strange.

“This is strange. This dairy farming village has suffered so much damage that 70% of the residents have died. But there are some people who have not been infected, even though their entire family has died of smallpox.”

“Almost all of those people are the ones who milked the milk. Not only this village, but other villages are the same. If you look for it, there are plenty of such cases. It’s amazing that no one has paid attention to this so far.”

Of course, this data is naturally data that I selectively processed appropriately.

If I had more time, I wouldn’t have been able to get this data out in a few months.

However, in actual history, Edward Jenner discovered the existence of the smallpox vaccine through this process.

He discovered that the residents who milked cows were surprisingly not infected with smallpox and began full-scale research.

But now there is no need to spend a long time doing that.

I know perfectly why this phenomenon occurs.

“Is it related to milk?”

“No. To be exact, it’s not because of the milk, but because of the cow that the milk comes from.”

The expressions of everyone listening to me changed completely from the beginning.

I could feel the concentration rising.

I continued to explain, drawing roughly on the paper.

“People who have not been infected with smallpox all have one thing in common: they have all touched the milk of cows infected with cowpox and have a history of suffering from cowpox.”

“Are you saying that the disease that livestock got was also transmitted to humans?”

“Yes. Usually, diseases that appear in animals have no effect on humans, and vice versa. But you know that there are quite a few diseases that affect both humans and animals. Cowpox is one of those types of diseases.”

“What is that cowpox? Is it a type of smallpox?”

“Yes. If you get cowpox, blisters or blisters will appear like smallpox. But the symptoms are so mild that they cannot be compared to smallpox, and the area where it occurs is not very large. Most importantly, people don’t die from cowpox.”

The people gathered here are leading intellectuals in modern Europe.

At this point, they would have understood what I was trying to say without additional explanation.

After a moment of silence, Jenner was the first to speak.

“So… you’re saying that if you get cowpox and get better, it has the same effect as recovering from smallpox.”

“That’s right.”

“And that cowpox is not life-threatening, unlike inoculation?”

“You understood correctly.”

Again, there was a moment of silence.

If true, this is a great discovery of the century.

It is a huge event that can mark a milestone in human history.

Everyone carefully reviewed the data I gave them several times with utmost caution.

“But sir, can you be completely sure about the safety of cowpox? If there are only dozens or hundreds of cases, there may be distortions depending on the probability.”

Guiyoten cautiously raised an objection.

It is a question that can be asked sufficiently.

Even with inoculation, if you are lucky, you can treat dozens of people and not have a single casualty.

“Certainly, the number of people listed on the list I brought is only dozens. But the history of people milking cows has already been over a thousand years. If cowpox is really a disease that can cause fatal results, it must have been recorded in some way during that long time.”

“That’s true too. At least in places where dairy farming is the main occupation, there must have been a story in some way. I think what you said is right.”

“Yes. In fact, if you ask people on farms, no one takes cowpox seriously.”

In fact, there were side effects even if this method was used.

In fact, if you get cowpox, about one in a million people can get encephalitis [inflammation of the brain].

But at this time, even if you count the population of the entire France, it was less than 30 million.

Even if you vaccinate the entire population, the number of side effects will not be less than 50.

Compared to inoculation, it was 10,000 times safer.

Moreover, compared to the study that 15 million people may have died from smallpox in Europe in the last 25 years, this was really nothing.

The conclusion has already been decided.

Even after that, questions were asked several times, but there was no blockage in my answer.

“Still, it will be difficult to do this in a short period of time.”

“It’s absolutely impossible to do it alone. That’s why I called three outstanding intellectuals, not just one.”

“First of all, there are many things to check. We don’t know how to obtain cows that can actually be used for cowpox, and we don’t know how to collect samples for experiments. Even if I think about it right now, there are more than one or two problems that need to be dealt with in advance.”

“Well… you’ll have to borrow money or get investment from Lavoisier’s family. I said that it wouldn’t cost that much, but there’s always a difference between the original plan and the actual battle.”

No matter how fast it is, it will take years, but if you want to shorten the period even a little, you will have to spend money after all.

Still, if Lavoisier, Guiyoten, and Jenner all guarantee it, it won’t be difficult to extort money.

What if there is a complaint that it is different from the promise?

Since they have already believed in me and bet on me, this time I am the boss.

What if you grumble? Ah, I said I would earn it and pay it back.

In the end, the conversation between Jenner, Guiyoten, and Lavoisier shifted to how to stably transfer this cowpox to humans.

“Should we cut off the pus and rub it on people as it is?”

“Rather than that, shouldn’t we apply the cowpox pus to something like a bifurcated needle [a needle with two prongs] and inoculate it?”

“We must also consider whether there are other hygienic problems. Since it is artificially transferred, other diseases may occur.”

“Yes. So, first of all, thoroughly sterilize with heat…”

At this moment, Guiyoten and Jenner completely forgot even the national sentiment that was deeply rooted between the two countries.

Even though they were British and French, they were doctors who saved people.