Q 01/05

Which is the only human disease ever to have been eradicated?

A) Polio

B) Measles

C) Rinderpest

D) Smallpox

Answer · why

D) Smallpox

The last natural case was a Somali cook, Ali Maow Maalin, in October 1977; the WHO certified eradication in 1980. Rinderpest, eradicated in 2011, is a...

Q 02/05

Edward Jenner's first vaccination in 1796 used material from which animal disease?

A) Swinepox

B) Horsepox

C) Sheep scab

D) Cowpox

Answer · why

D) Cowpox

He scraped pus from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes, who had caught it from a cow called Blossom, and inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps. Blossom's hide han...

Q 03/05

The word 'vaccine' derives from the Latin for which animal?

A) Pig

B) Horse

C) Sheep

D) Cow

Answer · why

D) Cow

Jenner coined Variolae vaccinae, 'smallpox of the cow', for cowpox. In 1881 Pasteur proposed extending the term to all protective inoculations in Jenn...

Q 04/05

Which 9-year-old, mauled by a rabid dog, received Pasteur's rabies vaccine in July 1885?

A) Joseph Meister

B) James Phipps

C) Émile Roux

D) Louis Thuillier

Answer · why

A) Joseph Meister

The vaccine itself had been produced by Pasteur's colleague Émile Roux. Meister survived and later worked as a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.

Q 05/05

Robert Koch's 1876 discovery of the bacterium causing which disease is considered the birth of modern bacteriology?

A) Cholera

B) Tuberculosis

C) Diphtheria

D) Anthrax

Answer · why

D) Anthrax

He went on to identify the tuberculosis and cholera bacteria too, and won the 1905 Nobel Prize for his TB work.