CHANGE

So much is history is concerned with change that historians sometimes try to study change itself, as well what is changing. They distinguish between a change, where something new happens, and a development, where something that existed before has been modified. They are careful to notice where change and development are not necessarily the same as progress( where things get better) and may sometimes be regress(where things get worse) They also look for the examples of continuity, the things which don’t change over a long period of times. They are also concerned with the rate of change, noticing that in some periods that changes happens so fast and in others very slow. Finally they are interested in the factors which influence change. Things like religion, war, government policy, change, brilliant individuals, levels of education, technology and jealousy etc. The first activity looks at smallpox, a killer disease which the World Health Organization said had been stamped out in the year 1980! In 1978, Edward Jenner, a country doctor from Berkeley suggested a way of preventing people from catching the disease. He noticed that milkmaids, who usually caught cowpox from cows didn’t caught smallpox. He deliberately infecting a child with cowpox and then later deliberately infecting the same child with smallpox, the child didn’t caught the smallpox because the cowpox had given him an immunity. This is the process that Jenner called vaccination claiming that this treatment could end smallpox. SMALLPOX KILLED SOME PEOPLE EVERY YEAR SEVENTEENTH –CENTURY LONDON. HOWEVER IT WAS WORSE IN SOME YEARS THAN OTHERS. IN 1659, SMALLPOX KILLED 1523 PEOPLE, WHILE IN 1660, IT KILLED 354,. ….. LUCINDA Mac CRAY BEIER,’ SUFFERERS AND HEALERS,; 1987