#OTD 21 January 1799 Edward Jenner's #smallpox vaccination was introduced.
In 1872 #Leicester was one of the most completely vaccinated towns in the kingdom owing to the alarm of several epidemics.

Just one year before in 1871 at the height of its vaccination programme , Leicester was attacked again by a severe smallpox epidemic. The death linked to smallpox during that year was more then three thousand-five hundred per million

of the population, about a thousand per million more than the mortality in London during the same #epidemic. The fearful mortality rate destroyed the faith of the vaccination in Leicester. Members from all corners of the community started to refuse the refuse vaccination for

their children.
By 1890, instead of having a ninety-five per cent vaccination rate only five percent of babies in their first three months were being immunised. With this decrease in the #vaccination rate,doctors began to predict another epidemic which would sweep through the

town like wildfire and decimate the population.
The citizens of Leicester refused the vaccination and instead concentrated on #sanitation. During this time no town in #England with equal population had such a very low mortality rate.
This became known as 'The Leicester Method'.

The central ideology behind the 'Leicester Method ' was not cleanliness it was #isolation. All smallpox cases had to be strictly quarantined. As with #Covid today, the safest way to avoid becoming a victim of the virus is not to be exposed to it.

No vaccination is one hundred per cent effective or ever claimed to be, but with isolation and immunisation we can go along way to protect ourselves. On 8 May 1980 the World Health Assembly officially declared the world free of this disease.

Eradication of smallpox is considered the biggest achievement in international public health.