29. Variolation – the Spread of Proto-Vaccination
Irrational resistance to inoculation cropped up even before vaccines were invented. The first recorded method to immunize people against infectious disease, smallpox, was variolation. Named after the illness’ strains, Variola minor and Variola major, material was taken from a recently infected person, and given to the hale to produce a mild infection. The deliberately variolated individual would develop some small and localized pustules just like those caused by smallpox. After about a month, they would subside, and whatever mild disease symptoms had cropped up would fade away. That would leave the recipient immune from future – and decidedly more dangerous – bouts of illness.
The risk of death was around 0.5% to 2%, but it was still far better than the risk of a naturally occurring smallpox infection. First used in China in the fifteenth century, the method spread to India, the Middle East and Africa, and eventually reached Britain and North America in the eighteenth century. Testing was crude and by modern standards controversial: in 1722, six condemned inmates at Newgate Prison were offered their freedom if they agreed to get variolated and then exposed to smallpox. The test was a success, and variolation spread – but not without vehement resistance from some segments of the public.