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Vaccination has protected humans from an ever-lengthening list of infectious diseases: polio, yellow fever, diphtheria, ...

Smallpox was eradicated in 1977. This amazing, global public health achievement isn’t just a page in a history book or an entry in Wikipedia, it is highly relevant today. Understanding the ...

Late in the 18th century, in Gloucestershire, England, Jenner noticed that milkmaids who suffered from cowpox lesions upon their hands were immune to smallpox.

Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in 1796, pioneering immunization practices. Louis Pasteur demonstrated that microorganisms cause disease and introduced pasteurization.

In 1796, a rural English doctor named Edward Jenner noticed that dairy workers almost never contracted smallpox. Instead, they caught a mild disease called cowpox.

The World Health Organization declared smallpox officially eradicated in 1980. The vaccine is no longer administered routinely by any government.

Jenner publicly took a great chance by intentionally exposing Phipps to smallpox after the vaccination.

An 1884 oil painting by Eugène Ernest Hillemacher depicts English physician and scientist Edward Jenner vaccinating a boy against smallpox, hundreds of years after this practice emerged in Africa ...