VARIOLATION

 VACCINE NAYSAYERS - WE'VE GOT NOTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT...

There is a long history of mandatory vaccinations/inoculations without even mentioning those I’ve personally received. General George Washington ordered his troops to be inoculated against smallpox way back in 1777. The method used at that time was variolation which meant rubbing smallpox scabs or the puss from pustules in a scratch on the new recipient. This was brought to my attention in a dramatization from HBO’s John Adams Story. In it a doctor came to the Adams household with a cart holding the cadaver of a smallpox victim. With a knife, he lacerated a smallpox pustule and brought it in to the house to rub on scratches made in the arms of the Adams family - variolation. Crude but apparently effective!