Vaccination is a global success story in eradicating diseases and infections by administering material which allows a person to develop immunity to a disease.
The word itself was first used by Richard Dunning (a friend of Jenner who discovered smallpox) in 1800 in a treatise called Some observations on vaccination and the inoculated cow-pox. By the time the book has been published, almost 100,000 people worldwide had received the vaccination for cow-pox across Europe (England, France, Spain, Austria). It was revolutionary medicine and very much discussed. Two years later, it was the subject of a House of Commons’ study 2 years later. The word vaccination itself comes from the Latin vacca (cow). As described yesterday in the smallpox blog, the vaccine originated from a cow and was generally deployed to describe cowpox virus. The use of the word meaning inoculation with a vaccine came almost exactly at the same time. Originally it related only to smallpox, but towards the end of the nineteenth century, Pasteur proposed that vaccination be used to cover all inoculations to honour Jenner.
Jenner’s work resulted in vaccination which spread round the world rapidly. In 1813 the US National Vaccine Agency was established. The world’s first vaccination program was established in Great Britain. It was regulated in the 1840 Vaccination Act.
