Story of smallpox eradication

A deadly and a contagious virus responsible for smallpox arose centuries ago. Smallpox can be traced back to a 3000-year-old Egyptian mummy and first epidemic during the Egypt-Hittie war in 1350 B.C. Since then smallpox made its way around the world via Egyptian merchants, and then through the Arab world with the Crusades, and all the way to the Americas and Australia through conquest and colonization. Three out of ten people infected would die leading to billions of deaths.

It was unbeatable as the earlier treatment of variolation was not successful and foolproof, because people died of infection caused by the treatment. It wasn't until the English physician Edward Jenner noticed something interesting about dairymaids leading to the modern-day solution. At the age of 13, while working with a country surgeon to learn the skills, he heard a dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox, for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly, pockmarked face.”

Later on, as a physician, he realized that she was right; people who got cowpox didn't develop the deadly smallpox. Cowpox is a less virulent and gave immunity to farm workers. So Jenner decided to test whether the cowpox virus could be used to protect against smallpox. In May 1796, Jenner found a young dairymaid, Sarah Nelmes, who had fresh cowpox lesions on her hand and arm caught from the udder of a cow named Blossom. Using matter from Sarah’s pustules, he inoculated James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener. After a few days of fever and discomfort, the boy seemed to recover from cowpox. Two months later, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. No disease developed, and Jenner concluded that protection was complete. His plan had worked. Jenner later used the cowpox virus in several other people and challenged them repeatedly with smallpox, proving that they were immune to the disease. With this procedure, Jenner invented the smallpox vaccination.

Unlike variolation, which used actual smallpox virus to try to protect people, the smallpox vaccination used the far less dangerous cowpox virus. The medical establishment, as cautious then as now, carefully looked over his findings before eventually accepting them; they implemented vaccination and prohibited variolation in England in 1840. After large vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the World Health Organization certified smallpox was eradication in 1979. Jenner is forever remembered as the father of immunology, but let's not forget the dairymaid Sarah Nelmes, Blossom the cow, and James Phipps, all heroes in this great adventure to develop a vaccination that helped eradicate smallpox.