A prescription for the original vaccine: sick cattle, milkmaids and a countryside physician. Why and how the first vaccine was made?

Abstract

Advances in contemporary medicine doubled average global life expectancy since 1900. We owe it to novel procedures and advanced hi-tech devices, to constantly improved drugs of new generation, and to? vaccination. Nowadays, when vaccination is a subject of controversy for some members of our society, it is important to be reminded of how and why first vaccines were created and applied. What variolation was, who were the pioneers of variolation/ vaccination and why they became commonly accepted by the society of the time. Herein we present milestones, from Middle Ages to 1796, leading to the first vaccination performed by a country-side physician Edward Jenner.