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
Jacobson v. Massachusetts eradicate smallpox were successful in Sweden, he did not agree with the methods. He said vaccination caused him "great and extreme suffering" that he would have to endure for the rest of his life. One of his sons "suffered adverse effects" after being vaccinated as a child. Jacobson and his wife were thus resistant when it came to mandatory vaccinations in Massachusetts. A leader in his community, Jacobson was one of the few who resisted mandatory vaccinations for smallpox in the early 20th century in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While many were pleased to hear about a vaccine for smallpox, others were