THE FIRST VACCINE
Smallpox was a horrible disease that killed hundreds of millions all over the world.
3 out of 10 who caught it died. Many more were blinded and badly scarred. When smallpox arrived in the New World with the Europeans, native inhabitants had no immunity to the disease. Smallpox killed millions of natives in North and South America. It spread ahead of the colonists and Conquistadores and did much of their work for them.
At first, people fought smallpox with a treatment used in Asia and Africa. Immunity was transferred to a person by exposing them to a small amount of the disease. Pus or a scab from a sick person was placed under another person’s skin. This was called an “inoculation.” Most people would get a mild case of the disease and recover – fully immune. But sometimes the person got very sick and even died. It was a risky treatment but was the only way. As always, some communities wanted the treatment, others were afraid and refused it.
Ben Franklin lost his 4-year-old son to smallpox. He forever regretted not giving him the inoculation in time. Afterwards, he worked to make inoculations more available. Even George Washington ordered all his soldiers to be inoculated to prevent smallpox in his army.
Interestingly, one group was rarely affected by the virus. Milkmaids and farmers who worked with cows were more likely to be immune. They came down with a different disease – Cowpox -that they caught from their animals. This caused a mild illness and a few boils that looked like smallpox. In 1796, an English doctor, Edward Jenner, took pus from a sore on a woman infected with cowpox and injected that into others. They had a brief illness and then full immunity. The procedure was called a “vaccination” after the word for “cow” in Latin: “vacca”.
Over time, health workers gave the smallpox vaccine to people all over the world. In the U.S., if you went to grade school before 1972, you probably stood in a line of kids waiting for your vaccination, and you might still have that scar on your left arm – just like kids all over the world. The last known case of smallpox was found in October 1977; in 1980 the disease was declared “eradicated” by the World Health Organization. Over 500 million died of smallpox in the last 100 years before the vaccination stopped the disease entirely.
When accepted and allowed to work, vaccines will protect us and our children from diseases that would kill or maim us. There are risks, but they are few. The world and its people are safer for their use.
[Published in local newspapers the week of Oct 19, 2025 by Ben Boardmen and friends; shared on this website with permission. Email info@clarkdemocrats.org for more info about how to support BARN OWL in your local paper.]
