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
London Smallpox Hospital make way for St Pancras railway station. The Hospital was replaced by the Highgate Smallpox and Vaccination Hospital, erected in 1848-1850. London Smallpox Hospital The London Smallpox Hospital, sometimes known as the Middlesex County Hospital for Smallpox and Inoculation, was established in 1745–6 and was said to be the first establishment of its type in Europe. The earliest buildings were in the West End of London, Finsbury and Bethnal Green, but in 1752 it moved to the house formerly occupied by Sir John Oldcastle in Coldbath Fields, admitting patients from 1753. A new hospital in St Pancras was opened in