History of smallpox In the late 1770s, during the American Revolutionary War, smallpox returned once more and killed thousands. Peter Kalm in his "Travels in North America", described how in that period, the dying Indian villages became overrun with wolves feasting on the corpses and weakened survivors. Smallpox was also used as a weapon by the British. In 1799, the physician Valentine Seaman administered the first smallpox vaccine in the United States. He gave his children a smallpox vaccination using a serum acquired from Edward Jenner, the British physician who invented the vaccine from fluid taken from cowpox lesions. Though vaccines were misunderstood
Mozart and smallpox named Doutrepout, then brought vaccination to Mozart's native city of Salzburg. According to Halliwell, "popular resistance was fierce," and both the government and the Roman Catholic Church (previously an opponent) took stern measures to promote vaccination. The first relative of Mozart's known to have been vaccinated was Johanna Berchtold von Sonnenberg, called "Jeannette" (1789–1805), Nannerl's youngest child; she was vaccinated during the 1802 campaign in Salzburg. With vaccination, great progress was made in reducing incidence of the disease, and it was eventually confirmed as eradicated in 1979. Mozart and smallpox In 1767, the 11-year-old composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was struck