John Adams HBO Series
 

Anyone else watch the beginning of the HBO Series on John Adams last night? Thought they did a pretty good job with it so far. I was curious what the doctor scene was about. Was that the precursor to the modern day flu shot?

don't know if this was the same thing i was watching

but it was totally fascinating talkin about the flu epidemic in 1918

and how it went world wide in a day

no airplanes flying to europe in those days

yet
in alaska which had a pop. of 50 k peeps

or eskimo's it wiped out 90% of-em

they're diggin them up now out of the perma frost
to experiment on the corpses which may still have the flu
they caught then .........to break the code with todays technology
in order to create a new vaccine

the wildest thing was that the flu bug arrived here via
a comet...

and it could happen all over again

I watched it...not a big fan of mini-series..but HBO stuff is usually good
I liked it okay...I 'll try and watch em all...

i like it so far

I liked it alot. Looks like Tom Hanks did a good job with McCullough's book of John Adams. I think it is taking a lot of criticism in the press as not being 100% accurate (ie the tar and feather scene ) and some think the actor who portrays Adams was mis-cast. I think he does a creditable job as adams, I like Laura Linny as his wife too. While based on facts, it has to appeal to audiences too so I think some parts have added some drama to them to keep it interesting.
Lastly most people don't know that Adams actually defended the British in court (and won) ( they don't teach this in schools), but it is true. I find the film (so far) very interesting. My youngest son(12) is magnetized to the screen, he loves this period in our history. I don't like mini-seires either but (like the book) this baby is a looooong story. I can't imagine watching it in a single sitting. I will order the dvd set.


Yes, the doctor scene was an early method of vaccination against small pox. Vaccinations (even today) contain a small amount of the virus itself...enough for your body to create antibodies and fight it off. (Louis Pasture came up with this right around that time I think...it was kind of new then.) The doctor scraped tissue off an active pox and put it in an opened wound on a healthy person...it was crude but the principles are the same today.

The smallpox vaccine was originally developed in England by a scientist named Jenner. He noticed that milkmaids were seldom, if ever, smallpox victims. Most milkmaids contracted a mild disease called "cow pox" which was not fatal. He theorized that the antibodies that developed in the body to ward off a cow pox infection gave the milkmaids immunity to smallpox. He found a courageous milkmaid who had cow pox in the recent past, who agreed to be infected with active smallpox. She didn't develop the disease. Further tests with her and other volunteers confirmed Jenner's theory. The first smallpox vaccine was made with active cow pox tissue.

Yep. I stand corrected, I should have googled it up before I posted that. There is a lot of interesting info on this topic dating back a long time.