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
History of smallpox in Mexico that started in Valley of Mexico, principally affecting children. More people recovered than died. In Mexico City, of 5400 cases admitted to the hospital, 4431 recovered and 1,331 died. This epidemic coincided with the rise of prices of corn and a typhus epidemic, which caused a slight demographic decrease in central Mexico. Another smallpox epidemic came into Mexico from Guatemala in 1794. Oaxaca and Chiapas were the first places affected by smallpox because of proximity. The epidemic traveled from Oaxaca to Puebla, and then spread to Mexico City and Veracruz by 1797. By 1798, the epidemic had reached Saltillo and