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
Vaccination and religion out these procedures be tried for attempted murder. In 1816 Iceland made the clergy responsible for smallpox vaccination and gave them the responsibility of keeping vaccination records for their parishes; Sweden also had similar practices. When vaccination was introduced into UK public policy, and adoption followed overseas, there was opposition from trade unionists and others, including sectarian ministers and those interested in self-help and alternative medicines like homeopathy. Anti-vaccinationists were most common in Protestant countries. Those who were religious often came from minority religious movements outside of mainstream Protestantism, including Quakers in England and Baptists in Sweden. Catholic and Anglican