1/21/2003: Normal smallpox vaccination

Public Service Announcement: this is what a "normal" smallpox vaccination looks like. I had no idea. No wonder it leaves a mark.

It seems downright medieval, doesn't it? Funny how we've developed medicine to the point where we can measure the resonant magnetism of the body and determine useful things from that, but making sure we don't get a terrible disease is still so... backwards.

I know it probably represents the state-of-the-art of 40 years ago, and I understand how it works, but still!

Hey, BTW, a quick pointer to IotD folks who may not know about other Cellar areas. If you like the IotD you may also like some of the images in the Cellar's Quality Images section as well. Sometimes stuff doesn't make the IotD, and sometimes people want to post their own images, and those things will wind up in this other area.

Re: 1/21/2003: Normal smallpox vaccination

People who are pushing 50 (like me, for example) can remember when they got their polio vaccinations, I'll bet. For us, oral vaccines for polio had not yet been invented, and the process at the time involved being stuck multiple times with a needle over a dime to quarter-sized area of the upper outside bicep, just below the shoulder. It must have been semi-traumatic, because I got mine at age 4 or thereabouts, and I remember the experience pretty clearly.

Needless to say, it leaves a permanent scar, one that really doesn't look like anything else. For the younger folks, check out your parents' or older friends' arms (presuming they'll let you, and not think you're being bizarre). We've all got 'em.

As evidence of how much vaccination technology has improved over the years, I remember my mother (who would have been among the first generation of our society to have received systematic vaccination against polio) having had a scar that was the size of a silver dollar. Makes the scars we 50's babies carry around not so bad by comparison.

thanks undertoad

i had not yet stumbled uppon the quality images section... good game!

This what I *really* like about The Cellar...lots of intelligent people with lots of interesting info. I also appreciate being corrected without either being told I'm an idiot or condescended to...such a difference from most other online sites I've frequented.

My mom always called the scar a polio scar...I had no reason to question her, and never bothered to actually check it out. Doh!

All this talk about smallpox vaccination scars led me to check my own from a far distant decade. In those days, girls were vaccinated on the thigh so that they would not have a disfiguring mark on the arm. So I looked for my scar. I couldn't find it! See what you guys have to look forward to?

When I was a child, my grandmother who had grown up in China from the 1890's-1920's used to tell us to eat every grain of rice on our dinner plates or for each grain left we would have a "madza" on our face. I didn't find out till I was older that "madza" is the Chinese term for the mark of small pox.

God, she was a strange women.

My co-worker's Chinese parents told him that each grain of rice left over foretold a pockmark on his future spouse's face. Perhaps they felt that the fear of having to look at the pox was a greater motivator than the fear of having them on one's own face.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slithy_Tove The picture may be ugly, but the vaccine works well. Smallpox was the first disease humans were ever able to eradicate completely from the face of the earth. Not a small achievement. I wear my smallpox scar proudly. I hope it stays eradicated.

I have a big "pock" on my arm from some kinda vaccination. I'll take a picture of it when I can figure out a good angle to show it off.

I love it when newbies come in and bump up these old threads. Always something interesting.

Say. Can we get carbon offsets for recycling old threads?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl I have a big "pock" on my arm from some kinda vaccination.

Yeah, that way the dope your snorting off their naked body doesn't fall off.

I can see the TB vaccination doing that . But the small pox inocculation shouln't leave a mark like that. I have both the TB and small pox mark on my arm.

Those pics look more like melenomas

Mum vaccinated us kids for everything known to man. (she worked in a childrens hospital during the forties and fifties, I think it scarred her for life.
the Small pox inocculations were a one off world wide eradication scheme. So you actually don't need it anymore. But the dickheads kept a few viles of the stuff .....so maybe we will in future

It only covers you for five years though

*blinks*......oh, pock..ok.