Smallpox vaccine Smallpox vaccine Smallpox vaccine, the first successful vaccine to be developed, was introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796. He followed up his observation that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox did not later catch smallpox by showing that inoculated cowpox protected against inoculated smallpox. Dryvax is a freeze-dried calf lymph smallpox vaccine. It is the world's oldest smallpox vaccine, created in the late 19th century by American Home Products, a predecessor of Wyeth. By the 1940s, Wyeth was the leading US manufacturer of the vaccine and the only manufacturer by the 1960s. After world health authorities declared smallpox had been
Smallpox noted that, in the 8-month voyage of the First Fleet and the following 14 months there were no reports of smallpox amongst the colonists and that as smallpox has an incubation period of 10–12 days it is unlikely it was present in the first fleet, it is now known that the likely source was bottles of smallpox virus possessed by First Fleet surgeons and there actually was a report of smallpox amongst the colonists – a seaman, Jefferies. There is circumstantial evidence that smallpox was deliberately introduced to Aboriginal population. During World War II, scientists from the United Kingdom, United