Changes

In the West, the history of formal vaccination attempts is often traced to Edward Jenner in 1798 (Figure 1), an English physician, who took Variolae vaccinae (cowpox) and used that to inoculate a 13-year old boy from smallpox by injecting him. This is often seen as a watershed moment in the West, as it begins the long history of vaccinations and, in fact, this single event is often credited with saving more humans than any other action, given the countless other vaccinations and subsequent generations this initial round of vaccinations saved. The term vaccinations, in fact, derives from the virus that causes smallpox, given the importance of that disease in the history of vaccinations. Among all diseases, smallpox represents the longest history of attempted vaccinations, with the disease mostly eradicated by 1979, nearly 200 years after the first vaccination by Edward and hundreds of years after variolation had begun.

==Later Developments==