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 schedule shot, can be given before or during pregnancy, depending on whether or not it is flu season. Vacinnation is safe right after giving birth, even while breastfeeding. In 1900, the smallpox vaccine was the only one administered to children. By the early 1950s, children routinely received three vaccines, for protection against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and smallpox, and as many as five shots by two years of age. Since the mid-1980s, many vaccines have been added to the schedule. In 2009 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended vaccination against at least fourteen diseases. By two years of