Smallpox vaccine Smallpox vaccine Smallpox vaccine, the first successful vaccine to be developed, was introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796. He followed up his observation that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox did not later catch smallpox by showing that inoculated cowpox protected against inoculated smallpox. Dryvax is a freeze-dried calf lymph smallpox vaccine. It is the world's oldest smallpox vaccine, created in the late 19th century by American Home Products, a predecessor of Wyeth. By the 1940s, Wyeth was the leading US manufacturer of the vaccine and the only manufacturer by the 1960s. After world health authorities declared smallpox had been
Smallpox vaccine 1970s. Calf lymph was known as early as 1805 in Italy, but it was the Lyon Medical Conference of 1864 which made the technique known to the wider world. In 1898 calf lymph became the standard method of vaccination for smallpox in the United Kingdom, when arm to arm vaccination was eventually banned (due to complications such as the simultaneous transmission of syphilis). Although Jenner used cowpox, the vaccine now contains a virus immunologically related to cowpox and smallpox viruses called vaccinia which causes a mild infection. The vaccine is infectious, which improves its effectiveness, but causes serious complications for