Smallpox 1718. In 1721, Cotton Mather and colleagues provoked controversy in Boston by inoculating hundreds. In 1796, Edward Jenner, a doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, rural England, discovered that immunity to smallpox could be produced by inoculating a person with material from a cowpox lesion. Cowpox is a poxvirus in the same family as variola. Jenner called the material used for inoculation vaccine, from the root word "vacca", which is Latin for cow. The procedure was much safer than variolation, and did not involve a risk of smallpox transmission. Vaccination to prevent smallpox was soon practiced all over the world. During the
1775–82 North American smallpox epidemic to say that policies and programs sprung up around epidemics and quarantines, wherever they were needed in the moment. However, the scourge of smallpox prompted changes to be made that would impact the public health of America for years to come. Even today, there is much debate surrounding the use of vaccines. Many parents and caregivers worry about potentially negative side effects associated with the vaccination of infants and children; this is merely and echo of the reaction to the smallpox inoculation and eventual vaccine. At the time of its introduction, almost all were extremely wary of this new medical