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
Vaccination policy immunity against it. This protects those unable to get the vaccine due to medical conditions, such as immune disorders. Vaccine-preventable diseases remain the most common cause of childhood mortality with an estimated three million deaths each year. Each year, vaccination prevents between two and three million deaths worldwide, across all age groups, from diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and measles. With some vaccines, a goal of vaccination policies is to eradicate the disease – make it disappear from Earth altogether. The World Health Organization coordinated the effort to eradicate smallpox globally through vaccination, the last naturally occurring case of smallpox was in