Chanakya was the royal advisor of the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta who played an important role in the establishment of the largest empire yet seen in Indian history, the Maurya Empire and Edward Jenner is know as the father of modern vaccination which ruled out numbers of invincible diseases from the history of mankind. How Chanakya, a philospher comes into story of a doctor and his discovery?
Lets try to dig it out, starting with some terrifying data about 3rd member of this article,
QuickFact Snakebites, most of them are caused by non-venomous snakes. Of the roughly 3,000 known species of snake found worldwide, only 15% are considered dangerous to humans. According to The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene more than 2.5 lakh cases of snake bites and 46000 death due to it are reported every year in India making it the most heavily affected country in the world.
Antivenom is a biological product used in the treatment of venomous bites or stings. Antivenom is created by milking venom from a relevant snake, spider, insect, or fish to initiate an immune system response to external agent (i.e. venom). The resulting neutralizer enzyme or antibodies are then harvested from the animal's blood and stored to give to the victim of snakebite or sting.
Antivenoms bind to and neutralize the venom, halting further damage, but do not reverse damage already done. Thus, they should be administered as soon as possible after the venom has been injected, but are of some benefit as long as venom is present in the body. Since the advent of antivenoms, some bites which were previously invariably fatal have become only rarely fatal provided that the antivenom is administered soon enough.
The principle of antivenom is based on that of vaccines, developed by Edward Jenner; however, instead of inducing immunity in the patient directly, it is induced in a host animal(horse or sheep) and the hyperimmunized serum is transfused into the patient.
The credit for discovery of modern vaccination is given to an English doctor named Edward Jenner in 1796.
Jenner introduced fluid containing the cowpox virus to healthy people body. Cowpox is an infection that usually infects cows (as the name suggests), but it can also infect humans. It’s very similar to smallpox, but is a much less dangerous disease.
Jenner found that by injecting people with the cowpox virus, they were protected from infection by the smallpox virus. He also discovered that this immunity could be passed from one person to another. This process became known as vaccination.
But The earliest documented examples of vaccination are from India and China in the 17th century, where vaccination with powdered scabs from people infected with smallpox was used to protect against the disease. Smallpox used to be a common disease throughout the world and 20 to 30% of infected persons died from the disease. Smallpox was responsible for 8 to 20% of all deaths in several European countries in the 18th century.
Another story found about history of vaccination related with Mouraya emperor Chandragupt and his royal advisor Chanakya which lead us further back to 300 BCE.
The emperor Bindusara was the son of the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya and his queen Durdhara. According to the Rajavalikatha, a Jain work, the original name of this emperor was Simhasena. According to a legend mentioned in the Jain texts, Chandragupta's Guru and advisor Chanakya used to feed the emperor with small doses of poison to build his immunity against possible poisoning attempts by the enemies. One day, Chandragupta, not knowing about the poison, shared his food with his pregnant wife, Queen Durdhara, who was 7 days away from delivery. The queen not immune to the poison collapsed and died within a few minutes. Chanakya entered the room the very time she collapsed, and in order to save the child in the womb, he immediately cut open the dead queen's belly and took the baby out, by that time a drop of poison had already reached the baby and touched its head due to which child got a permanent blueish spot (a "bindu") on his forehead. Thus, the newborn was named "Bindusara".
EmoticonEmoticon