The history of vaccination is quite interesting.*
Many of us have read that British physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823), vaccinated people in the late 1700s.
However, smallpox vaccination has a long history, before 1796.
Dr. Jenner was responsible for refining the process (using cowpox pus instead of smallpox pus) so that people wouldn’t die, or become very ill, after a smallpox vaccination.
The first reference to smallpox inoculation (1549), in medical literature, was made by Chinese pediatrician Wan Quan (1499-1582). Variolation (the practice of inoculating people with smallpox pus) became common place in China in the late 1500’s.
The technique had a mortality rate as high as one death per thousand patients, but patients who under went it were immune to smallpox.
Since smallpox itself had a 20-30% mortality rate, patients were willing to undergo the procedure.
Variolation spread to Africa, and parts of Europe.
Around 1706, Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather (a Harvard graduate) learned of vaccination from one of his slaves, a man called Onesimus.
Onesimus had been vaccinated in Africa, years before he was brought to America, and enslaved.
Mather went on to promote vaccination during the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721-1722.
(Mather finally released Onesimus from slavery in 1716.)
You can read the full comic strip that I excerpted HERE!
In 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) introduced the idea of smallpox vaccination to the British royalty.
Lady Montagu was the wife of the British Ambassador to Turkey.
That is where she had learned about inoculations.
Montagu had both of her own children vaccinated against smallpox, and encouraged the royal family to do the same.
In 1777, General George Washington ordered that the entire Continental Army be inoculated, because of the 1775-1782 smallpox epidemic during the Revolutionary War.
General Washington had had a mild case of smallpox in 1751, so he was already immune.
As I learned in Dearest Friend (a biography of First Lady Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey), the entire John Adams family underwent smallpox inoculations.
John Adams (the second U.S. President) was inoculated in 1763, before he married Abigail.
In a letter to his fiancé, he joked that he:
must permit the little Villains call’d the small Pox to have their Feast this Spring. [colonial-era spelling, and capitalization]
Mrs. Adams, and several of the Adams children, were inoculated in 1775.
This procedure usually took at least six to seven weeks.
First, the secluded patients would take various debilitating medications (laxatives and diuretics), preparing themselves for inoculation.
Then, they’d be infected with the virus, and (hopefully) merely experience a mild form of the disease.
Two of the Adams children became dangerously ill, but that was common at the time.
The American Medical Association didn’t push for compulsory smallpox vaccination until 1899.
Some American citizens did rebel.
In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Jacobson vs Massachusetts, and ruled that it was within the authority of local governments to make vaccination requirements of their citizens, and to levy fines against those who resisted.
There were still smallpox outbreaks around the world, as late as the 1970’s.
The “Vaccination and Immunization” article, in volume 23 of Collier’s Encyclopedia, points out that no vaccine is 100% effective.
Factors like age, nutritional status, and overall immunologic competence can make a vaccine much less effective.
Vaccinations, like medicines, act differently on different people, and medical studies try to determine what’s what.
There can also be side effects with vaccination, sometimes serious side effects.
However, just because vaccines don’t work 100% of the time, or occasionally cause side effects, doesn’t indicate that we should rid ourselves of vaccines.
Isn’t that just throwing the baby out with the bath water?
On September 17, 2025, Senator Rand Paul interrogated former CDC Director Susan Monarez, PhD, about the COVID-19 vaccine.
They argued whether the vaccine reduces hospitalization for children under 18, and whether the CDC should change recommendations for infants under six months old.
Ms. Monarez was appearing before the Senate, because in August of 2025, she had been fired for refusing to loyally rubber stamp all of RFK Jr’s vaccine policies, sight unseen!
This change in attitude toward vaccination, from 1776 to 2025, is fascinating.
250 years ago, John Adams, his family, and the entire colonial army, took a risk, so they would not live in fear of those “little villains call’d the smallpox.”
People of the time joked about “the smallpox,” even though they greatly feared it.
Today, around 23% of Americans don’t trust scientists as a group (Pew Research Center).
Some say that it isn’t enough if a vaccine just minimizes their disease symptoms.
Any vaccine has to be “perfect,” and work in every case, for them to roll up their sleeves.
In 1776, smallpox vaccination was a long risky process.
Today, some folks believe that one almost risk-free injection is an imposition on their freedom.
*Most, but not all, facts pertaining to vaccination are taken from the “Vaccination and Immunization” article in volume 23 of Collier’s Encyclopedia. Fun fact that I didn’t find in Collier’s, but did discover in the above comic book about Onesimus: Ben Franklin was against smallpox inoculation in his youth. However, he accepted its’ usefulness when he reached adulthood.
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