You may think you know the story of vaccines—Edward Jenner and the milkmaids.
But the milkmaid story is a lie.
But vaccination wasn't even the first procedure to deliberately inject a disease—
The results: smallpox killed ~17%; inoculation < 2%
Some people were already immune.
Aha! It turned out that cowpox *also* granted immunity to smallpox.
But Edward Jenner, then a young apprentice, heard about it and saw an opportunity.
Smallpox was “variola” in Latin, so Jenner called cowpox “variolae vaccinae”—smallpox of the cow—and his technique *vaccination*.
D. A. Henderson, who led the effort, found another way.
He lived.
What happened? Here are some factors: