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 vaccine also have occurred in India, but this is disputed; other investigators contend the ancient Sanskrit medical texts of India do not describe these techniques. The first clear reference to smallpox inoculation was made by the Chinese author Wan Quan (1499–1582) in his "Douzhen xinfa" (痘疹心法) published in 1549. Inoculation for smallpox does not appear to have been widespread in China until the reign era of the Longqing Emperor (r. 1567–1572) during the Ming Dynasty. In China, powdered smallpox scabs were blown up the noses of the healthy. The patients would then develop a mild case of the disease and from