the story of vaccination is not the story of progressive scientific rationalism. Its hero is not Addison, who first found white blood cells. Nor is it Metchnikoff, whose discovery of phagocytes might have opened a door on protective immunity. Not even the scientists who discovered the innate response to bacterial cells merit being lauded as the heroes behind this medical milestone.III Rather, its history is one of veiled hearsay, gossip, and myth. Its heroes are nameless: the Chinese doctors who air-dried the first pox pustules; the mysterious sect of worshippers of Shitala who ground viral
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