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
Smallpox vaccine persons at high risk of exposure to smallpox virus. However, due to the high rate of serious adverse effects, the vaccine will only be made available to the CDC (a part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services) for the Strategic National Stockpile. The mortality of the severe form of smallpox—"variola major"—was very high without vaccination, up to 35% in some outbreaks. A method of inducing immunity known as inoculation, or "variolation" was practiced before the development of a modern vaccine and likely occurred in Africa and China well before the practice arrived in Europe. It may