Inoculation predates Jenner. The modern story is standardization, attenuation, and later molecular display of antigen.
Success against smallpox and near-success against polio sit beside harder targets such as HIV and a universal flu shot.
Timeline
Cowpox material is used to protect against smallpox; publication follows in 1798.
A public rabies vaccination of Joseph Meister becomes a founding legend of the lab-vaccine era.
Calmette and Guerin give an attenuated bovine tuberculosis vaccine to an infant in Paris.
Inactivated polio vaccine enters wide use in the United States after field trials.
Licensed measles vaccines begin a long decline of a highly contagious childhood killer.
WHO certifies the end of a human disease after ring vaccination and surveillance.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative begins; wild types later shrink to a few countries.
Decades of lipid-nanoparticle and mRNA work meet a pandemic; emergency authorizations arrive in December.
History here is civic technology, not an argument that every product is identical.
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