Cowpox to the mild form of smallpox and the observation that dairy farmers were immune from smallpox inspired the first smallpox vaccine, created and administered by English physician Edward Jenner. The word “vaccination,” coined by Jenner in 1796, is derived from the Latin root "vaccinus", meaning of or from the cow. Once vaccinated, a patient develops antibodies that make them immune to cowpox, but they also develop immunity to the smallpox virus, or "Variola virus". The cowpox vaccinations and later incarnations proved so successful that in 1980, the World Health Organization announced that smallpox was the first disease to be eradicated
1775–82 North American smallpox epidemic public. These measures included the refusal to allow contact between his soldiers and the viral refugees of Boston. Additionally, certain retreats of the Continental Army can be linked to Washington's wish to avoid smallpox and his intense caution when it came to his troops. Though it was practiced in many parts of the world, the technology of inoculation, or Variolation, was not known in Europe until the 1700s. It was widely publicized by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who inoculated her own children against smallpox, despite widespread concern and controversy. Inoculation was the practice of introducing infected materials in to the