Hi, everyone. And welcome back to our new segment. It means what？

Yeah.

OK, your YEAH is getting less passionate. Anyhow欢迎回来我们的新板块词源考古研究所.

Hi, 安澜.

Hi, 璐璐. Hi, everyone.

So let me propose the word of the day.

Okay.

This is a word that - well basically will bring up some painful memory of the past 3 years.

Okay.

So, you know it has something to do with pandemic.

Yeah.

Is this something we probably all got? And that is the word vaccine.

Oh yes. Vaccine or vaccination.

就是接种疫苗, 对吧？疫苗. I'm pretty sure you all got vaccinated. Well, for COVID.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I got vaccinated quite a few times, actually I think now.

Me too, me too. But I've always wondered, although we've talked about vaccination and all the relevant words and expressions in other episodes. But where does this word even come from? Vaccine? Is it medically originated?

No, it's actually a Latin word and it comes from the word for cow.

Cow like mooooooo, cow.

Moo, cow. Vacca.

所以是拉丁文的牛的意思. I fail to see the connection between modern medicine or medical treatment and moo cows.

Well, we just call them cows in English. If you call them moo cows, it sounds a little bit stupid.

Okay, thank you.

That's alright.

But I'm pretty sure there's interesting background story.

Well yeah. And it all comes from when vaccines were first invented. So, this was in the 18th century and a British scientist named Edward Jenner. Now Edward Jenner was a doctor as well as a scientist. And he noticed something quite strange. That June that time, when smallpox was everywhere.

Smallpox中文叫天花, we don't have it anymore, do we? Like in the world? It has been eradicated.

Yeah. It's one of the only diseases that’s been completely eradicated.

现在已经没有天花了, 但是当时18世纪的时候天花是泛滥, 而且我看了一些资料是说it was hugely lethal, it can kill people.

If you got smallpox, it could be one, a death sentence. Or even if you recovered, you'd be covered in smallpox scars.

Oh. So you basically, 毁容了, disfigured. And still, you don't get smallpox from cows. Do you?

No, no. So what he noticed was milkmaids.

挤奶工, 挤奶女工.

So women and also young children as well who were going out collecting the milk. Now, these milkmaids and young children, they were getting something called cowpox.

这个我还真听过叫牛痘是吧？And cowpox, although they both have pox in it, but cowpox and smallpox, they are different.

They are different. They come from the same sort of family, But cowpox is a lot less lethal. He noticed the people who were collecting the milk and got cowpox were less likely to get smallpox.

Oh I can see the logic. So if you get cowpox, 如果你得了牛痘, 你就不会得天花, 或者说至少你对天花就有免疫力.

Yeah. You start getting immunity. Now Jenner, what he did was he injected pus.

是脓, 所以牛痘里面的脓.

He injected that into a young child. Now, this boy did not get smallpox. And this is where it gets a little bit controversial because Edward Jenner used to get young poor children, inject them with cowpox as sort of testing, and then inject them with smallpox.

Oh. That nowadays, if it’s nowadays definitely will not go past the ethical committee, 现在的伦理委员会肯定是通过不了的. But back then was 18th century.

It was the 18th century

And that was saving lives.

And that's what happened. So these children did not get smallpox. And then from that, he created the smallpox vaccine.

And those children basically were his human guinea pigs.

Yeah. They were human guinea pigs. That's a little bit of the controversial side of it. But the long and short of it is that Edward Jenner saved, I would say probably millions of lives.

I've heard the fatality rate of smallpox back then was probably anywhere between 5 to10%.

Yeah, and sometimes it could have gone even higher.

当时天花致死率还是很高的. 其实你说到牛痘, 我突然想到两件事情, obviously I'm of it too young for that.

But my parents’ generation, 就是我父母那一辈或者再往前走, 中国好像咱们也有种牛痘的. So were your parents vaccinated with like a small dosage of cowpox, because that was what they were doing in China.

It was a very, very small dosage. It was normally treated. And nowadays, smallpox vaccines, they still exist, but we don't really inject people with them anymore. They're not really using cowpox anymore. They're using something else.

I see. Actually, the other thing it reminds me of is the other day I was watching a horror film from American Horror Stories. And one of the episodes, it's pretty graphic. It was about the smallpox period. And then people were dying, they were dropping like flies. And then there was this milkmaid later turned prostitute.

Okay.

She was having these pox. She thought it was smallpox, but she wasn't dying or getting into any critical condition. She was still relatively healthy despite having those pox. And then she would have intimate relationships with the men in the village. And the men who got intimate was her sort of were immune to smallpox.

Okay, I'm not sure that you can get immunity that way from –

No, they were actually probably sucking on the pus.

Okay.

That's why I said I didn't want to make it so graphic.

Ok ok. Let's move on. That one.

Sorry about that guys. Sorry, children.

Now to end today's episode, let me ask you when was your last vaccination? I mean I know we all got vaccinated for COVID, but when was your last vaccination?

Oh. My last vaccination was a few days ago. I got myself the flu shot.

Oh. Yes, me too. The flu I had to say last time around was even worse than COVID.

Yeah. I really don't have the time to get the flu, so I always get a flu shot every year.

Yeah.so In today's episode, we talk to you about the origin of the word vaccine and the interesting back story of the first vaccination basically. So guys, if you have some vaccine that you think you should get - probably get it sooner than later.

Yeah. Maybe not from a cow though.

All right. All right. And we wrap up this episode here, can't wait for the next episode where we get into the interesting origin story of another word or another phrase. Thank you, 安澜.

Thank you. And until next time.

We'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye.