In this episode, we chart the WHO smallpox eradication campaign - an international operation of massive manpower, unlikely allies, and sheer human determination. From the concept of "ring-fence" vaccination beginning with forest firefighters in America, to a junior doctor striking a bargain with smugglers on the India-Bangladesh border, it's a stor…

In the final years of the 19th century, a vast crowd takes to the streets of the city of Leicester, in an outburst of anger at the medical and political establishment.In this episode, we look at the birth of the anti-vaccination movement. With the threat of smallpox absent from our lives, it's difficult to relate to those who resisted the vaccine i…

At the start of the 19th century, a ship sets sail from Bengal, India, carrying a most peculiar cargo...In this episode, we look at the development of the smallpox vaccine by an English country doctor, which rapidly eclipsed the earlier practice of inoculation. The cowpox vaccine represented an astonishing new development in public health, but also…

In this Episode of Vaccine, we look at the origins of inoculation, a precursor to vaccination which gave people immunity by deliberately infecting them with a mild case of smallpox. With origins in medieval China, it became common practices in countries such as India and Turkey in the 16th and 17th centuries, but still remained unheard of in Europe…

Today, it’s so difficult for many of us to imagine what it must have felt like to have lived in a time when the spectre of smallpox stalked the streets. And it’s this historical emotion, this forgotten terror, that this episode of Vaccine is going to explore.Find out about the earliest attempts to treat the disease in the libraries of Baghdad, and …

In 1980, the World Health Assembly gathered to announce that one of mankind’s greatest and deadliest enemies had been finally, and completely defeated. That enemy was smallpox. In this opening episode, we look at the devastating impact of smallpox throughout history, as it wrought havoc on the human race. Discover how a 12th-century samurai drove t…