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
1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom as few laboratories as possible handling the virus. An official government inquiry into Parker's death was conducted by a panel led by microbiologist R.A. Shooter, and comprising Dr Christopher Booth, Prof. Sir David Evans, J.R. McDonald, Dr David Tyrrell and Prof. Sir Robert Williams, with observers from the World Health Organization (WHO), The Health and Safety Executive and the Trades Union Congress. Shooter's report was debated by Parliament. Since Shooter's "Report of the investigation into the cause of the 1978 Birmingham smallpox occurrence" also played an important role in the court case against the university for breach of safety legislation,