What Was the First Vaccine?

The vaccine is one of the most extraordinary and powerful resources in public health. Its development has saved millions of lives, and we hope it continues to save them in the future. But the truth is that this story began somewhere. If you want to know what the first vaccine was, you'll need to do three things: travel more than 200 years into the past, face the consequences of smallpox at that time… and get a couple of cows.

Any attempt to analyze the origin of the first vaccine requires a deeper understanding of its natural opponent, which takes us directly to the history of smallpox. If you are younger than me, you should know that you were born into a world without smallpox. A powerful combination of vaccination and education allowed us to eradicate that disease in 1980, but no one denies that the price was too high. Smallpox had (and still has) the potential to wipe out entire populations, and if we follow the texts of historians, it did so on more than one occasion. Before the creation of its vaccine, the only effective way to combat smallpox was variolation (inoculation of the smallpox virus), a process in which a healthy person received a small wound and infected material (powdered scabs, fluids) was placed on it. This created a less intense infectious condition, and within weeks the body developed immunity, but it was not without risks.

The First Vaccine

It was in the late 1760s that a young Englishman and future doctor named Edward Jenner heard a very particular story. Apparently, milkmaids who had suffered from cowpox (a much less aggressive variant) were safe from the lethal human smallpox. Several doctors and researchers studied the apparent immunity generated by cowpox, but never reached the reason for its effectiveness. Jenner concluded that the fluid in the blisters caused by cowpox was responsible for the protection received, and so on May 14, Jenner took a sample from the hands of a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes (who had consulted him for her cowpox infection) and used it on James Phipps, the son of his gardener.

Within nine days, the child had a slight fever, loss of appetite, headache and general malaise, but from the tenth day his condition improved remarkably. Six weeks later, Jenner used a sample of human smallpox on Phipps, and he did not become ill. As if that were not enough, Jenner repeated the process more than twenty times, but Phipps never showed signs of smallpox. He was immune to the disease.

The scientific community thoroughly analyzed Jenner's work, but its effectiveness and safety made the process accepted, and in the 1840s, the British government decided to prohibit variolation. Now, why does it have that name? The terms 'vaccine' and 'vaccination' used by Jenner come from Variolae vaccinae, 'cowpox', and in the 1880s, the renowned and controversial Louis Pasteur proposed that both words be extended to new protections.

It is impossible to calculate precisely the number of lives saved by the first vaccine, and all that came after. Today, its benefits are rejected by anti-vaccine movements that, besides being drowned in fear and ignorance, spread false data and absurd theories. But the scientific community and a much better-informed sector of the public steps forward without hesitation to confront every ridiculous conspiracy.