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
Smallpox demon poetry including 105 poems published in 1805. Traditional smallpox folk dances have been observed even in present-day Japan, including Ibaraki Prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture, for the avoidance of smallpox devils. In European countries the "red treatment" was practiced from the 12th century onwards; when he caught smallpox, King Charles V of France was dressed in a red shirt, red stockings, and a red veil. Queen Elizabeth I of England was likewise wrapped in a red blanket and placed by a live fire when she fell ill with smallpox in 1562, and similar treatments were applied to other European monarchs. In