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
1947 New York City smallpox outbreak stated that they had other diseases of the central nervous system and none had encephalitis. Three deaths were clearly related to other complications of the vaccine—a 66-year-old man who developed sepsis from an infected vaccination site, and two infants with eczema who developed generalized vaccinia after contact with others who had been vaccinated. Two additional victims who received the smallpox vaccine and died were named in newspaper reports—Benjamin F. Cohen, age 41, of Newark, N.J., who died on May 5, a little more than two weeks after being vaccinated, and Nancy Jean Vanderhoof, age 3, of New Providence, N.J., who