Marked Berkeley, Gloucestershire

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Vaccines and the end of smallpox

Smallpox killed hundreds of millions of people. In 1721 inoculation was brought to Britain from Turkey, and to Boston from West Africa; Edward Jenner showed in 1796 that cowpox could protect against it; and in 1980 the World Health Organization declared smallpox gone from the Earth.

Place
Berkeley, Gloucestershire · Boston · Merca, Somalia · GenevaThe whole world
Laid out as
An inventionA new way of doing something, link by link: what came before, the breakthrough, and what it changed.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

BeforeSmallpox killed millions every century.

  1. IA deadly disease
  2. IILady Mary and Onesimus
  3. IIIJenner and the milkmaid
  4. IVVaccines and their opponents
  5. VThe world campaign
  6. VIAli Maow Maalin, the last natural case

AfterSmallpox was the first human disease wiped out.

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
  • Onesimus
  • Edward Jenner
  • Sarah Nelmes
  • Ali Maow Maalin

Objects

  • Jenner’s notes
  • A bifurcated needle

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1721 to 1980. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?