There's evidence that as far back as the 10th century, Chinese medical practitioners were using inoculation to prevent smallpox

and variolation for the same as early as the 15th century. For reference, inoculation generally

refers to any attempt at stimulating a person's immune system so that they develop antibodies

against a particular disease,

while variolation is a more specific type of inoculation in which bits of diseased tissue or fluid

are utilized to ensure that said person receives an immune system boosting dose.

Spending some time with an infected person in the the hope of not getting infected, but still developing

some antibodies then, is a type of rudimentary inoculation, while scratching a person's skin

and rubbing ground-up smallpox scabs from an infected patient or recently deceased victim

is a type of variolation. Since Western medicine became the default platform for medical research and experimentation

over the course of the past 500 years or so,

in part because it also produced the most widely distributed and published scientific culture,

we only have rough knowledge of these earlier practices that were seemingly common

in many parts of the Asian world, in particular. China was pretty advanced in this regard,

it would seem. But so were Indian subcontinent-based cultures, based on reports from the East India

company's medical professionals who sent the Royal Society back in London notes about local

practices that seemed effective, or at the very least more effective than the often mysticism

and miasma-based practices, even very learned people around Europe were practicing at the time.

That said, an English surgeon and apothecary,

which is sort of like a pharmacist who blends his own medicinal concoctions, named Edward

Jenner, heard that folks working in the dairy industry, milking cows and such, tended to have

very smooth skin, which was unusual in an age and in a place where

...