Scientific Revolution (Europe)
(1800 to 1900)
What happened?
The Scientific Revolution is a drastic change in scientific thought during the 16th and 17th centuries. A new view of nature emerged during that period, replacing the Greek view after almost 2.000 years. Classical religious ideas gave way to modern scientific ideas. During the revolution there was a profound change in the understanding of physics, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry and biology, including human anatomy, and the way these sciences were practiced. Science became an autonomous discipline. By the end of this revolution, science had replaced Christianity at the focal point of European civilization. The most important ca use can be seen the printing press, which ensured that scientists could obtain a large audience in a short time.
The series of events during the Early Modern Period marked the emergence of modern science. The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe towards the end of the Renaissance period and continued in the 18th century. This change influenced the intellectual social movement the Enlightenment. The publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’ "de revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (= On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often marked as the beginning in 1543.
The concept emerged in the 18th century. Jean Sylvain Bailly saw a two-stage process of sweeping away the old and establishing the new. The beginning of the Scientific Revolution was focused on the recovery of the knowledge of the ancients. By the end of the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment followed the Scientific Revolution. The standard theory of the history of the Scientific Revolution claims that the 17th century was a period of revolutionary scientific changes. There were theoretical and experimental developments and changed radically how scientists worked.
Scientists started with a scientific method conceived in the 17th century. Natural and artificial circumstances were set aside. A research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted by the scientific community. Assumptions were abandoned and observation with an open mind was used. Analysis of known facts produced further understanding. In practice, many scientist and philosophers believed that a healthy mix of both was needed.
By the end of the Scientific Revolution, the qualitative world of book-reading philosophers had been changed into a mechanical, mathematical world to be known through experimental research.
Helvetius's Book 'Méthode Donnée, according to which charity should treat the poor of the countryside'. Found: Kerlouan, Midi-Pyrénées, France (JN0146)
Vaccination
± 1703
Cotton Mather, the pastor involved in the Salem Witch trials, in 1692, was a defender of the believe in witches and demons.
The smallpox virus caused many victims, especially among children. During the 18th century alone, it was responsible for about 40% of the infant mortality in the Netherlands. It is therefore not surprising that there was a great search for a medicine.
In China, India, the Middle East and Africa, it was common wisdom that contamination of humans with some dried smallpox crust from a smallpox sufferer made the recipient a little ill, but then often protected him from the disease for the rest of his life. Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador, in 1716 to 1718, mentions in letters of meetings in which children were given some ground pox crust in small cuts in the arm, and that she would not be able to convince the English doctors about this treatment.
In the English colony, Boston, US, a smallpox epidemic broke out. More than 50% of the population fell ill in 1721. The slave, Onesimus, had told Cotton Mather how he had been vaccinated with smallpox as a child in Africa and had been immune ever since. Mather tried to convince everyone that this African custom would protect them too. He became the target of a bomb attack. 287 townspeople were vaccinated by Mather. Six of them (= 2%) died, while those who got the disease naturally, it was almost 15%. Administering live human smallpox virus, during the 18th century, was dangerous. And the inoculated person was temporarily infectious to others. Without vaccination, the chance of dying from smallpox increased. This method is called variolation, after the Latin pox virus, variola. Variolation was gaining ground in the West. From the first vaccinations there was resistance. For example, it was argued that it was contrary to God's word, which, after all, had brought disease into the world as a reminder and teaching. Jean Adrien Helvetius (1661-1727), the queen's first physician and councilor, called variolation a godly, illicit and not a generous or Christian physician appropriate practice in 1724. Better, it had stayed with the heathen and had never been undertaken or imitated by Christians.
Edward Jenner (1749-1823), English physician, was ‘varied’ in his youth. His preparation was: fasting, purging, bloodletting, to let the disease rage with vaccinated boys in a stable. His attention was drawn to popular experience that infected with the cowpox virus proved immune to human pox. He reasoned that deliberately inducing cowpox infection in humans would have the same effect. He inoculated some pus from a cow pox ulcer on Sarah Nelmes' hand into the arm of eight-year-old James Phipps, his gardener's son in 1796. The boy got some increase but withstood the treatment without further problems. Later, Jenner injected the boy with human pox virus, using the well-known variolation method. There were no signs of disease, with which Jenner had demonstrated the effectiveness of his method, which he called vaccination, after the Latin ‘vacca’ (= cow).
Despite opposition, smallpox vaccination conquered Europe. The king of the Netherlands, Willem I, thought it was a gift of providence. The smallpox bill was introduced in 1814. School-age children had to prove their vaccination. Because there was no compulsory education, the vaccination coverage remained low. A renewed outbreak, between 1870 and 1874, could claim a catastrophic 23.000 deaths in the Netherlands. The introduction of compulsory education, in the year 1900, increased the vaccination rate by ± 100% and smallpox disappeared from the Netherlands. The last smallpox was diagnosed in the Netherlands in 1951.
The virus still exists in highly secured laboratories. Vaccines have now been developed for other diseases. From 1979, most countries have vaccination programs. Billions are lost in the search for vaccines.