The first vaccine targeted which disease?

The first vaccine targeted smallpox. English physician Edward Jenner demonstrated the world’s first successful vaccine in 1796, using cowpox material to protect against the far more dangerous smallpox virus.

Smallpox vaccination grew from the older practice of variolation, in which people were deliberately exposed to smallpox material to produce a milder infection. Variolation could reduce the risk of severe disease, but it could also cause illness and spread smallpox. Jenner’s insight was that infection with cowpox, a related but much less dangerous virus, could provide protection without deliberately giving someone smallpox.

The word “vaccine” comes from the Latin vacca, meaning “cow,” reflecting the cowpox connection. Smallpox became the first disease eradicated through a coordinated global vaccination campaign. The World Health Organization certified smallpox eradicated in 1980, after the last naturally occurring case was recorded in Somalia in 1977. A common mix-up is calling variolation the first vaccine; it was an earlier immunization method, but Jenner’s cowpox procedure is recognized as the first vaccine.