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
History of smallpox in Mexico caused Viceroy Félix Calleja to take preventive measures like fumigations and vaccination, which were successful. There were sporadic outbreaks until 1826 when smallpox appeared in Yucatán, Tabasco and Veracruz brought by North American ships. In 1828, there were reported cases in Hidalgo, Oaxaca, State of Mexico, Guerrero, Chiapas, Chihuahua and Mexico City. Efforts to eradicate smallpox in Mexico started with Dr José Ignacio Bartolache who wrote a book in 1779 about smallpox called “Instrucción que puede servir para que se cure a los enfermos de las viruelas epidemicas que ahora se padecen en México”(Instructions that may help to cure smallpox