00:00Before vaccines, there was a stranger idea. For centuries, Chinese parents did something
00:05terrifying, they deliberately infected a healthy child with smallpox, on purpose.
00:09Let me explain what they were trying to escape. Smallpox killed more humans than any war in
00:14history. It was brutally contagious. Victims broke out in boils from head to toe. Survivors
00:20were often scarred for life, some went blind. Natural infection killed about 30% of the sick.
00:26And worst of all, it preyed on children. Here's how the earliest method worked.
00:31You find a child mid-illness with mature scabs. You collect those scabs, grind them into a fine
00:36powder, and blow it up the nose of a healthy child. That's it. A rudimentary infection with a controlled
00:42dose. They called it variolation. And the Chinese used it for at least 300 years. The first recorded
00:49case dates back to 998 AD. A powerful official's sons kept dying of smallpox. When a new son
00:56was born, he brought in a famous healer to inoculate the boy. The record says, fever on
01:01day 7, scabs spawned by day 12. The boy survived. It's one of the earliest documented cases of
01:07a child being deliberately inoculated in China. By the 16th century, the technique had matured.
01:13Four methods existed. The crudest, dress a healthy child in the clothes of a smallpox patient.
01:18Low success, high risk. Another, pressed cotton soaked in pus into the nostrils.
01:25Dangerous. The safest and most common, grind scabs into powder, mix it into water, and pack it into
01:30the nose on a cotton swab. But here's what's genuinely remarkable. They didn't stop there.
01:36They noticed the pus taken directly from a sick person, called lai variola, was potent but risky.
01:41So someone had an idea, pass the virus through human bodies, generation after generation,
01:46then use the final batch as the seed. They called it, ripe variola. One 18th century
01:52Chinese text describes it perfectly, the more times the material is passed, the weaker its poison
01:56becomes, while the part that builds immunity remains. This was written in the 1700s. And
02:02it describes what we now call live attenuated vaccines. The exact principle behind the modern
02:07tuberculosis vaccine. They had no microscope. They didn't know viruses existed. But through
02:13generations of trial and error, they found the right path through sheer observation.
02:16The state eventually took over. The Khonshi emperor issued official orders promoting
02:21inoculation and set up a royal inoculation office to protect the imperial children.
02:25But here's the catch. Variolation carried a real risk, roughly 2% mortality. Think about that.
02:33A healthy child, deliberately infected, with a 2% chance of dying from the very thing meant to save them.
02:38Mathematically, 2% beats 30%. The math is easy. But the parents weren't mathematicians.
02:45They faced a different equation. First, smallpox was terrible, but not everyone got it.
02:51If you don't inoculate, your child might never catch it at all. But if you do inoculate,
02:56they will definitely be infected, and that 2% is a risk you invited through your own door.
03:00Second, and heavier, if an unvaccinated child dies, it's fate. If a vaccinated child dies,
03:06it's your choice. Statistically identical. Emotionally, worlds apart. As a result,
03:13vaccination stayed rare in China well into the 20th century. Even the imperial family kept losing
03:18children to smallpox. Two daughters of the Daoguang Emblem, ages 11 and 5, both died of the disease,
03:24with the best doctors, an official inoculation office, and state-approved textbooks by their side.
03:29Now, a correction. You may have heard that Chinese variolation traveled to Europe and
03:33sparked cowpox in modern vaccines. The evidence is thinner than the story.
03:38Chinese variolation delivered powder through the nose. Europe used a needle to introduce matter
03:43into the skin. Two different methods. And Russia's visit to learn it came in 1688,
03:48later than the story suggests. The honest version, China independently invented variolation and did it
03:54remarkably well. Whether the European branch descended from it, there's no solid proof either way.
03:58In 1796, Edward Jenner introduced cowpox vaccination. Almost zero risk, better results.
04:06Variolation faded. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated,
04:12the only human disease ever completely wiped out. So here's the honest ending.
04:16Variolation wasn't a crude technology that got surpassed. It was humanity's first real success at a
04:21problem, trading a small risk to avoid a far bigger one. That logic powers every vaccine you've ever
04:27received. But it was also the first encounter with an eternal dilemma. A vaccine asks you to
04:32deliberately harm a healthy person, a little. Ming dynasty parents faced 2%. Your number today is far
04:38smaller, not because the question got easier, but because generations made it easier for you.
04:43Jenner. Pastor. The ones who tested on their own children first. Before you judge those Ming fathers
04:50for hesitating over 2%, you're counting 10,000 children. They were holding one. And the one you're
04:56hesitating over right now. That's one too.
05:36Beside 5", one too.
05:37You got delayed.
05:43posted 5.1.
05:43He tested on thelando.
05:43Those are the mostijuana issues that were quickly lost every year.
05:44I think we haven't even been asked for this unless they have the figures.
05:45And there we are.
05:55And there's a really deep look.
