inexplicablerage:

I’m sitting here chortling over scientific etymology. God damn, shit’s funny. 

So, “vaccine” comes from the Latin root “vacca,” which means cow. This on it’s own is hilarious, and is less funny with backstory, but I’ll give you the backstory anyway, for those you who don’t know it already.
Basically, in the 1790s-ish, an English doctor called Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids just straight-up didn’t get smallpox, but did notice that they got cowpox, which was very similar, but much less severe than smallpox, so he was like, “Maybe exposure to cowpox prevented the contraction of smallpox???” So he exposed this little eight-year-old kid to cowpox, and then later exposed him to smallpox, and, lo and behold, the kid didn’t get smallpox, and thus vaccines were born, and that’s how it’s related to cows.

I also find it very funny that the word “atom” comes from the Greek “atomos,” meaning uncuttable, when actually fuck you Democritus and also John Dalton, meet some goddamn sub-atomic particles. 

I realize that this is very lame.

Posted 5 years ago with 387 notes
Via: neurogenesls-has-moved-deactiva, Source: neurogenesls-has-moved-deactiva
Tagged: #s #science
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