Inventions & Discoveries · Medicine and health

Smallpox vaccine

1796 · 18th century

The smallpox vaccine is the first vaccine developed against a contagious disease: in 1796 the British physician Edward Jenner showed that infection with the mild cowpox virus gave immunity to smallpox; his Inquiry of 1798 presented cowpox inoculation as a safe alternative to variolation. The word vaccine comes from vacca, Latin for cow. Passed from arm to arm and later grown on calves, the vaccine served the WHO's global campaign of 1958–1977 that eradicated smallpox, the only human disease to be eradicated.

Smallpox vaccine
Image: James Gillray · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

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First known
1796
Where
Berkeley, England
Credited to
Edward Jenner · Kingdom of Great Britain

NoteBenjamin Jesty and others had tried cowpox inoculation from 1774; Jenner was the first to publish the evidence.

Built onVariolation16th century
Led toPolio vaccine1950

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Mentioned in 2 profiles

Colonial ruleStrengthsKingdom of BavariaGovernance

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Smallpox vaccine. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/smallpox-vaccine
MLA
“Smallpox vaccine.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/smallpox-vaccine. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Smallpox vaccine.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/smallpox-vaccine.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Smallpox vaccine’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/smallpox-vaccine (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻