Variolation shortly after variolation began to outweigh the benefits of the procedure. From the 1760s, a number of individuals, including John Fewster, Peter Plett, Benjamin Jesty, and particularly Edward Jenner, were interested in the use of material from cowpox, an animal infection, to protect against smallpox. In 1796, Jenner vaccinated James Phipps, did more vaccinations in 1798, and was the first to publish evidence that cowpox protected against smallpox, was safer than variolation, and that his vaccine could be maintained by arm-to-arm transfer. The use of variolation soon began to decline as the smallpox vaccine became widely used and its benefits
History of smallpox of Royal Marines may have attempted to use smallpox as a biological weapon in 1789. However, in 2002, historian John Connor stated that Day's theory was "unsustainable". That same year, theories that smallpox was introduced with settlers, deliberately or otherwise, were contested in a full-length book by historian Judy Campbell: "Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780-1880" (2002). Campbell consulted, during the writing of her book, Frank Fenner, who had overseen the final stages of a successful campaign by the World Health Organization (WHO) to eradicate smallpox. Campbell argued that scientific evidence concerning the viability of variolous