Public health in history - A history of immunization: the development of the vaccine

It can be argued that the discovery of vaccines that you could inoculate the population with in order to immunize against infectious diseases is the most successful public health initiative in history. Immunization Against Infectious Diseases (Department of Health (DH), 1996) pays tribute to the ‘father’ of vaccination, Edward Jenner, in a bicentenary edition. Known as the Green Book, this publication is produced as a guide to administering vaccines in the UK. It gives detailed information about the nature of the immune response in the human body and how vaccines work. The term vaccine was coined by Jenner from the Latin vacca (cow), in recognition of the work that had been carried out with cowpox to combat smallpox