Work of an In-patient Department

45. The Origin of Infections
The infectious diseases of man are usually divided into two large groups. Some diseases affect only men, others affect both man and animals, with man most frequently infected from animals.
Every infectious disease has not only characteristic clinical manifestations but also its own specific way of invasion into the human body.
Such a disease as dysentery ['disntri], which is one of the diseases of the •' intestinal infections, is spread through the intestines and stools.
Theinfections of the respiratory tract compose the second subgroup. Dur­ing coughing or talking the pathogens are discharged from the infected organs ism with the mucus from the membranes of the respiratory tract into the air in the fonn of drops. The infection is spread when the air containing drops of mucus with the pathogens in it, is breathed in. The diseases of this subgroup are diphtheria, smallpox, etc.
The diseases of the third subgroup are spread through the skin and the mu­cosa in which the pathogens multiply. In some cases it is the skin, in others it is the mucous membrane of the eye. Direct contact and various things belonging to the sick may be responsible for spreading the infective agent.
The diseases of the fourth subgroup are spread by living insects. The patho­gens "causing these infections circulate in the blood or lymph and are not dis­charged from the organism. The insects become infected as they ingest (сосут) the blood of a diseased man. They become infectious for other people after the pathogens have multiplied in their organism. All these diseases, of which en­cephalitis [m,sef9'laitis] is an example, are called blood infections.
Edward Jenner
Edward ['edwad] Jenner [Мзепэ] was born in 1749. He was an English physician, the discoverer of vaecination. Jenner studied medicine in London. He began practice in 1773 when he was twenty-four years old.
Edward Jenner liked to observe and investigate ever since he was a boy. His persistent scientific work resulted in the discovery of vaccination against small­pox. For many years every infant when it was about a year old was vaccinated against this disease. The vaccination was effective for a prolonged period of time. Now vaccination against smallpox is not carried out because this disease has been stamped out (искоренять) in our country.
In Jenner's days one out of every five persons in London carried the marks of this disease on his face. But there were few people who recovered from the disease, because in the 18th century smallpox was one of the main causes of death.
The disease had been common for centuries in many countries of Asia. The Turks (турки) had .discovered that a person could be prevented from a serious attack of smallpox by being⁴ infected with a mild form of the disease.
One day Jenner heard a woman say: "I cannot catch smallpox, I've had the cowpox (телячья оспа)." That moment led to Jenner's continuous investiga­tions and experiments.
The first child whom Jenner introduced the substance from cowpox vesicles ['vesiklz] (пузырек) obtained from the wound of a diseased woman was Jimmy Phipps. It was in 1796. For the following two years Jenner continued his experi­ments. In 1798 he published the report on his discovery. He called his new method of preventing smallpox "vaccination", from the Latin word vacca, that is "a cow".
At first people paid no attention to his discovery. One doctor even said that vaccination might cause people to develop cow's faces.
But very soon there was no part of the world that had not taken up vaccina­tion. Thousands of people were given vaccination and smallpox began to disap­pear as if by magic.