While Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is renowned for introducing smallpox variolation to England in the 1720s, the systematic development of modern vaccines often occurred in public health laboratories. In the 1930s, bacteriologists Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering worked for the Michigan Department of Health. Their critical innovation was culturing the whooping cough (pertussis) bacterium on a medium of human blood, which allowed them to produce an effective vaccine. Facing skepticism and limited f

A brief look at Onesimus — the African man whose knowledge of variolation helped save Boston during a smallpox outbreak. #africanhistory #blackhistory #history #medicine #science | Anre John