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
History of smallpox he challenged the state's authority on forcing people to receive vaccination. His case was lost at the state level, but Jacobson appealed the ruling, and so, the case was taken up by the Supreme Court. In 1905 the Supreme Court upheld the Massachusetts law: it was ruled Jacobson could not refuse the mandatory vaccination. In Canada, between 1702 and 1703, nearly a quarter of the population of Quebec city died due to a smallpox epidemic. There is evidence that smallpox reached the Philippine islands from the 4th century CE onwards – linked possibly to contact between South East Asians and