Praise and credit in science often go to those who popularized an invention, not to those who invented the idea first. In 1840, Warren de la Rue created one of the first electric light bulbs in human history as he placed within a vacuum tube a platinum coil and glided an electric current through it, and alas there was light.

However, maybe the name Thomas Edison, who was to work on the same concept nearly half a century later, sounds more familiar to most as he was the one who took the framework, improved the design and reduced its price, thus popularizing the product.

Such is the case with preventing smallpox as well, as the East with its vast medical knowledge at the time and dominance in the field of sciences that lasted for centuries, had discovered the vaccine for smallpox hundreds of years before the West. When Europe rediscovered the cure, it was a victory claimed by the West, as it often has been.

Smallpox, which was one of the most terrible epidemics in human history, was among the primary causes of mass deaths in the 18th century. A febrile, severe and contagious disease that leaves scars on the face, covered with bumps filled with pus, it killed three out of 10 infected people while causing severe health problems and irreparable damage to the skin in the rest. In the 20th century alone, smallpox is estimated to have killed 300 million people and 500 million in the last 100 years of the virus’s existence before it was eradicated in 1979.

The British even used this cureless disease as a biological weapon against France and Native Americans in the 18th century. Historical records show they gave blankets and handkerchiefs that belonged to the victims of the disease to native tribes, deliberately infecting these communities.

Smallpox, also known as the “Speckled Monster” in Western societies, was actually partially treated in the East using methods such as “variolation,” which were seemingly primitive vaccination techniques but largely prevented deaths, unlike those in Europe.

The method of inoculation, which had been applied for centuries against smallpox in Ottoman lands, was observed by the wife of the British ambassador to Istanbul in 1721. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter she wrote to her country, explained with astonishment that something called vaccination against smallpox was deployed in Istanbul. The letter stands as the oldest document proving vaccine production in the Ottoman Empire.

This “variolation” procedure involved administering powdered smallpox scabs or fluids taken from pustules of someone with smallpox, subcutaneously applied to the arms or legs of a healthy individual that had not been infected, through superficial scratches made in the skin. The inoculated person would then develop pustules identical to those naturally caused in people with smallpox, but the effects of the disease would lessen significantly. In two to four weeks’ time, the symptoms would disappear and the patient would recover, gaining immunity in the process.

According to some sources, this method was introduced to the Ottoman Empire by Circassian merchants in 1670. When the method, which became widespread, was seen by the wife of the British ambassador and applied on his own children, the West gained position for the first time in the war against smallpox. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was perhaps the most famous among many children who survived smallpox in the West thanks to this method.
(Daily Sabah, Turkey)

Khartoum / Rome: Thousands of Muslim tombs built hundreds of years ago in the 4,100-square-kilometer ‘Kasna’ area of ​​East Sudan have been discovered in a mysterious galaxy-like arrangement, but scientists do not know why they were built in this order. ۔

These small and large tombs, numbering more than ten thousand, are at least five hundred years old and spread over a very large area in Kasna. Two types of structures are more prominent in these tombs: tumulus and qubba. Tumulus is a common mud-like structure that rises slightly above the surrounding surface, while the “dome” also has a tomb wall and roof with a dome.

The thousands of tombs, spread over such a vast area, seem to have no arrangement, but a few years ago, Stefano Constanzo, an archaeologist in Africa and the Mediterranean at the University of Naples in Italy, suspected that there might be an arrangement.

With the help of detailed images taken from powerful Earth-observing satellites, he compiled a comprehensive map of the tombs spread over the entire area, with each point representing a tomb. From here, glimpses of the order in these tombs began to emerge.

With the help of his British and Sudanese research colleagues, he decided to use a special technique called the “Neman Scott Cluster Process”.

Until now, this technique has only been used to determine the order of clusters of stars and galaxies. This was the first time it had been tested in the field of archeology. The discovery of the use of this technique was astonishing even to these experts: the layout of all the tombs was like galaxy clusters! That is, a cluster of tombs in the middle and more clusters of tombs scattered around it that were built in later times.

With this in mind, experts have speculated that the tombs in the middle are probably of more important and “sacred” entities, while the smaller tombs scattered around them belong to those who have devotion to these entities.

In this way, the arrangement is exactly the same as that of clusters of stars in a galaxy, or clusters of galaxies Despite all this knowledge, experts do not know why these tombs were built in this mysterious cosmic order. More research is needed to find the answer to this question, which may be completed in the long run.

The library contained 3,000 copies of Bhagavad Gita, 85% of books were in Kannada.

MYSURU: In a tragic incident, miscreants have allegedly set ablaze a public library run by a 62-year-old daily wage labourer that had a collection of 11k books including 3 thousand copies of Gita, in Mysuru.

Syed Isaaq had become a popular face among the residents of Rajiv Nagar and Shanti Nagar in the city as he took up a bold step of setting up a library giving free access to all the residents in the region for the last 10 years. Deprived of education, Isaaq worked as a bonded labourer before turning into an Under Ground Drainage to earn a livelihood.

With an intent to help inculcate reading habits among the people and also encourage them to learn Kannada, Isaaq had set up this public library in a shed-like structure inside a corporation park in Rajiv Nagar. Every day, over 100-150 people would visit his library. Issaq would purchase over 17 newspapers including the ones in Kannada, English, Urdu etc.

Nearly 85% of the books in his library collection were Kannada while several were English and Urdu. “The library had over 3,000 exquisite collections of Bhagavad Gita, over a 1,000 copies of Quran and Bible besides thousands of books of various genres which I sourced from donors,” he says.

However, the incident has not deterred Issaq. “I will not cow down. I will rebuild the library from the scratch”.