Inoculation facts for kids

Inoculation (also called Variolation) was an old way to protect people from a serious disease called Smallpox. Smallpox was very dangerous and could kill many people.

Instead of a modern vaccine, inoculation used a small amount of material from someone who had a mild case of smallpox. This material, like a scab, was put into a healthy person.

The idea was to give the person a much milder version of the disease. This way, they would get sick but usually not die, and then they would become immune (protected) from smallpox in the future.

While smallpox itself killed about 35 out of every 100 people who got it, inoculation was much safer. It only caused death in about 0.5 to 2 out of every 100 people who received it. Later, a scientist named Edward Jenner found a much safer and better way to prevent smallpox using a vaccine.

How Inoculation Was Used

Early Use in China

People in China might have used inoculation as early as the 10th century. One story tells of a Chinese Emperor whose oldest son died from smallpox. The Emperor wanted to find a way to protect his family from this terrible disease.

He asked many people from all over his empire to find a cure. A man supposedly used inoculation to protect the Emperor's family. However, this story was written down hundreds of years after it supposedly happened.

Inoculation became more common in China during the 16th century, especially during the time of the Longqing Emperor. At first, some very strong types of the virus were used, but these were later banned to keep people safer.

Inoculation is also known to have been used in India in the 18th century. It might have been used there even earlier, but there is no clear proof.

Bringing Inoculation to Europe

The practice of inoculation first came to England thanks to a woman named Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She was the wife of an ambassador (a country's representative) and saw inoculation being used in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

Lady Mary was very impressed by how well it worked. She had lost her own son to smallpox and had scars from the disease herself.

In 1721, when smallpox was spreading widely in England, she bravely decided to have her own daughter inoculated. Many people visited her daughter and were amazed that she only got a mild sickness and then recovered.

After this success, inoculation was even tested on people in Newgate Prison. Only after these tests did members of the royal family get inoculated. Soon, many other European countries started using inoculation to fight smallpox.

Why Inoculation Stopped Being Used

In 1796, a doctor named Edward Jenner made an important discovery. He found a new and much safer way to prevent smallpox using a vaccine. This new vaccine had a very low risk of death and was much more effective than inoculation.

Because of Jenner's discovery, inoculation slowly started to be replaced by the new vaccine. Eventually, inoculation was made illegal in England in 1840. France had already banned it earlier, in 1762, because of the deaths that could still happen from the procedure.

Images for kids

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  Mary Wortley Montagu, painted by Charles Jervas.

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  A picture from 1802 showing the difference between smallpox (left) and cowpox (right) after 16 days.

See also

In Spanish: Inoculación para niños