vaccination

vaccination, a term first used by Jenner (1798) for inoculating cowpox matter (vacca = cow) to produce immunity from the far more virulent smallpox, has since come to mean the creation of immunity from infectious diseases in general. Its benign effect on death rates from smallpox led to gradual abandonment of earlier techniques, but not without opposition. The 1840 Vaccination Act prohibited inoculation and permitted vaccination of the poor at ratepayers' expense; the 1853 extension made the practice compulsory, though it was not universally enforced. An organized movement to repeal compulsory vaccination developed after 1871, leading eventually to amendments of previous statutes (1898). Nevertheless, with compulsory notification of infectious diseases and better trained public health officers, vaccination and revaccination rapidly reduced the prevalence, morbidity, and mortality of smallpox. Subsequent vaccines (using attenuated or altered viruses) against diphtheria, polio, measles, whooping cough, and rubella have largely controlled these diseases.

A. S. Hargreaves