Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae, the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the title of his Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox.
Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating the body's adaptive immunity, they help prevent sickness from an infectious disease. When a sufficiently large percentage of a population has been vaccinated, herd immunity results. Herd immunity protects those who may be immunocompromised and cannot get a vaccine because even a weakened version would harm them. The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified. Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the elimination of diseases such as polio and tetanus from much of the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccination prevents 3.5–5 million deaths per year. A WHO-funded study by The Lancet estimates that, during the 50-year period starting in 1974, vaccination prevented 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children under age 5. However, some diseases have seen rising cases due to relatively low vaccination rates attributable partly to vaccine hesitancy.
Cowpox is an infectious disease caused by the cowpox virus (CPXV). It presents with large blisters in the skin, a fever and swollen glands, historically typically following contact with an infected cow, though in the last several decades more often from infected cats. The hands and face are most frequently affected and the spots are generally very painful.
The smallpox vaccine is used to prevent smallpox infection caused by the variola virus. It is the first vaccine to have been developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, British physician Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Cowpox served as a natural vaccine until the modern smallpox vaccine emerged in the 20th century. From 1958 to 1977, the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a global vaccination campaign that eradicated smallpox, making it the only human disease to be eradicated. Although routine smallpox vaccination is no longer performed on the general public, the vaccine is still being produced for research, and to guard against bioterrorism, biological warfare, and mpox.
The New World of the Western Hemisphere was devastated by the 1775–1782 North American smallpox epidemic. Estimates based on remnant settlements say at least 130,000 people were estimated to have died in the epidemic that started in 1775.
The Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition, commonly referred to as the Balmis Expedition, was a Spanish healthcare mission that lasted from 1803 to 1806, led by Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis, which vaccinated millions of inhabitants of Spanish America and Asia against smallpox. The vaccine was transported through children: orphaned boys who sailed with the expedition.
Benjamin Jesty was a farmer at Yetminster and Worth Matravers in Dorset, England, notable for his early experiments in inducing immunity against smallpox using cowpox.
Benjamin Waterhouse was a physician, co-founder and professor of Harvard Medical School. He is most well known for being the first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine in the United States, which he carried out on his own family.
The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic spanned 1836 through 1840, reaching its height after the spring of 1837, when an American Fur Company steamboat, the SS St. Peter, carried infected people and supplies up the Missouri River in the Midwestern United States. The disease spread rapidly to indigenous populations with no natural immunity, causing widespread illness and death across the Great Plains, especially in the Upper Missouri River watershed. More than 17,000 Indigenous people died along the Missouri River alone, with some bands becoming nearly extinct.
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus, which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making smallpox the only human disease to have been eradicated to date.
The history of smallpox extends into pre-history. Genetic evidence suggests that the smallpox virus emerged 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Prior to that, similar ancestral viruses circulated, but possibly only in other mammals, and possibly with different symptoms. Only a few written reports dating from about 500 AD to 1000 AD are considered reliable historical descriptions of smallpox, so understanding of the disease prior to that has relied on genetics and archaeology. However, during the 2nd millennium AD, especially starting in the 16th century, reliable written reports become more common. The earliest physical evidence of smallpox is found in the Egyptian mummies of people who died some 3,000 years ago. Smallpox has had a major impact on world history, not least because indigenous populations of regions where smallpox was non-native, such as the Americas and Australia, were rapidly and greatly reduced by smallpox during periods of initial foreign contact, which helped pave the way for conquest and colonization. During the 18th century the disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five reigning monarchs, and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.
Variolation was the method of inoculation first used to immunize individuals against smallpox (Variola) with material taken from a patient or a recently variolated individual, in the hope that a mild, but protective, infection would result. Only 1–2% of those variolated died from the intentional infection compared to 30% who contracted smallpox naturally. Variolation is no longer used today. It was replaced by the smallpox vaccine, a safer alternative. This in turn led to the development of the many vaccines now available against other diseases.
The history of smallpox in Mexico spans approximately 430 years from the arrival of the Spanish to the official eradication in 1951. It was brought to what is now Mexico by the Spanish, then spread to the center of Mexico, where it became a significant factor in the fall of Tenochtitlan. During the colonial period, there were major epidemic outbreaks which led to the implementation of sanitary and preventive policy. The introduction of smallpox vaccination in New Spain by Francisco Javier de Balmis and the work of Ignacio Bartolache reduced the mortality and morbidity of the disease.
John Ring (1752–1821) was an English surgeon, vaccination activist, and man of letters.
Inoculation is the act of implanting a pathogen or other microbe or virus into a person or other organism. It is a method of artificially inducing immunity against various infectious diseases. The term "inoculation" is also used more generally to refer to intentionally depositing microbes into any growth medium, as into a Petri dish used to culture the microbe, or into food ingredients for making cultured foods such as yoghurt and fermented beverages such as beer and wine. This article is primarily about the use of inoculation for producing immunity against infection. Inoculation has been used to eradicate smallpox and to markedly reduce other infectious diseases such as polio. Although the terms "inoculation", "vaccination", and "immunization" are often used interchangeably, there are important differences. Inoculation is the act of implanting a pathogen or microbe into a person or other recipient; vaccination is the act of implanting or giving someone a vaccine specifically; and immunization is the development of disease resistance that results from the immune system's response to a vaccine or natural infection.
Valentine Seaman was an American physician who introduced the smallpox vaccine to the United States and mapped yellow fever in New York City. His contributions to public health also include women's education in nursing and midwifery.
In 1721, Boston experienced its worst outbreak of smallpox. 5,759 people out of around 10,600 in Boston were infected and 844 were recorded to have died between April 1721 and February 1722. The outbreak motivated Puritan minister Cotton Mather and physician Zabdiel Boylston to variolate hundreds of Bostonians as part of the Thirteen Colonies' earliest experiment with public inoculation. Their efforts would inspire further research for immunizing people from smallpox, placing the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the epicenter of the Colonies' first inoculation debate and changing Western society's medical treatment of the disease. The outbreak also altered social and religious public discourse about disease, as Boston's newspapers published various pamphlets opposing and supporting the inoculation efforts.
The 1896 Gloucester smallpox epidemic affected more than 2,000 people in Gloucester between 5 January and 27 July 1896. A large number of the town's population were not vaccinated.
Thomas Christie, (1772/3–1829) was a Scottish physician, notable for his work on the treatment of smallpox in Ceylon.
James Smith, was a Maryland physician serving Baltimore City as a medical practitioner in 1797. In 1801, Smith, advocate for smallpox vaccination, established the Baltimore General Dispensary as a vaccine clinic for the impoverished administering the first smallpox vaccinations in Baltimore County, Maryland. Smith served as a vaccination agent for the states of Maryland and Virginia during the War of 1812.
