Before 1400, variolation was a common immunology practice. This involves using scabs from smallpox to inject and treat/prevent smallpox from occurring in healthy individuals. This technique was brought to Europe by the 1700s by Lady Montague who came across it during her travels of the world and was greatly promoted during the Revolutionary War. Variolation protected some individuals, however others were infected instead. In 1798, an English doctor named Edward Jenner noticed that people who worked with cows rarely contracted smallpox; sometimes they did get cowpox, though, a disease that wasn’t as severe as smallpox. Jenner then used cowpox scabs to make a successful smallpox vaccine. (Smallpox is the variola virus, cowpox is the vaccinia virus.) The last recorded case of smallpox was in 1977 in Somalia. In the 1880s, Louis Pasteur coined the term “vaccine” which he worked on mostly for agricultural purposes. Pasteur was the first to develop a vaccine for rabies. In 1...
