 Everybody, Dr. O. In this video, we're going to talk about two more historical figures. So we're going to look at Edward Jenner and Alexander Fleming. So real quickly, Edward Jenner is the father of vaccination. Alexander Fleming is the accidental discoverer of penicillin, our first natural antibiotic. So let's go ahead and start here with Edward Jenner. So you see in the picture here, you see the milk made in the back with the cows. So Edward Jenner was alive during a time when smallpox was ravaging the world. It was killing half the people that were coming in contact with it. But he noticed that milk maids who were working in the dairy that got cowpox were not getting smallpox or if they did get smallpox, they were not dying from it. So he realized that somehow receiving the cowpox sickness or virus, he didn't know what it was at the time, was actually protected from smallpox. So prior to him and this first attempt at vaccination, there was something called variolation for thousands of years in different parts of the world. What they were doing is they would take like ground up scabs from people that survived smallpox or and have people inhale them or they would take tiny, tiny bits of smallpox. Let me show you smallpox. It's real hard to see, but take tiny bits of this pus and actually scrape it into the skin of people. So variolation was actually exposing people to tiny amounts of the actual smallpox virus and hoping they didn't get sick and die. About 1% of people that were variolated did end up getting sick and dying. But if you were protected, then you were way less likely to get smallpox in the future. You were immune to it now, which came with a 50% death rate. So there's an argument about whether or not smallpox has actually killed more humans than any other infectious disease. It's either that or tuberculosis. So back to Jenner though. So I believe there's different legends out there, but he had a child. I don't think it was his own child. I believe it was one of his employees, children, was the first person they actually tested this on. Giving people cowpox on purpose to protect them from smallpox. So he is giving credit for the first vaccination, which was for smallpox, which it's probably not a coincidence that smallpox is the only disease that we've eradicated off the face of the earth, at least at this point. So VACA actually means cow. So that's where it was actually pastore that named vaccinations. And he credited Jenner by calling it vaccination because VACA does mean cow. All right. So that's Edward Jenner and his smallpox vaccine. And still to this day, they actually vaccinate you from smallpox by giving you a different virus. So they don't actually give you tiny bits of smallpox. They give you a virus that looks enough like smallpox that you're being protected. So all right. And then this is Alexander Fleming. So in the happy accident part of it, there's different legends go about this, but he was, let's just, I'll show you a plate. This isn't one of his, but he was growing bacteria on plates and he went away on vacation or went away for the weekend and he came back and he saw these plates had been contaminated and threw them in the garbage. But then he had this kind of aha moment where he realized that where there was contamination, there was a zone of inhibition. There was an area around the contamination where there weren't microbes growing. So he accidentally discovered that the penicillium mold produces the antibiotic penicillin. So this would have been, in 1928, the dates are important with penicillin. So 1928 was when he discovered it. The 1940s, I usually say 1944, is when it was actually made commercially available after a large fire in the Northeast. But prior to that, there was probably some military uses. But so this is Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. And I'll do a whole separate video series for a later chapter on the history of antibiotics. And he's just the beginning because there's a long gap between 1928 and 1944. And I'll explain what happened there then. So, okay. Edward Jenner, the father or creator of the first vaccination. If you want to look at it that way, and then Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of the first natural antibiotic. Okay, I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.