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
HMS Surprise (1796) time, Le Drézénec, who had been recently promoted to "capitaine de frégate", was suffering from smallpox and was incapacitated. Consequently, her first lieutenant, Lieutenant Le Breton, commanded "Unité". Captain Thomas Fremantle in command of the frigate HMS "Inconstant" had heard there was a French frigate in Bône, and sailed to intercept her. When "Unité" arrived in the afternoon of 20 April 1796, the watch aboard "Unité" identified "Inconstant" as a neutral vessel and Le Breton did not clear the ship for action. About an hour later, "Inconstant" sailed alongside, boarded and captured "Unité" intact. About a year after capture, "Unité"