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This was the first person to try to prevent smallpox.
More than a thousand years ago, there are records of Chinese medicine men carrying out a practice known as variolation (named after smallpox, or variola, virus). This involved taking the dried scabs from smallpox victims, grinding them to a powder and blowing them up the victim's ... err, sorry ... patient's nose.
Did it work ?
Yes ... and no. Smallpox strains can be divided into virulent strains (bad news, 25-30% death rate) and less virulent strains (same symptoms but 1% or lower death rate). Talented medical men probably tried to develop attenuated strains by careful selection of lymph from the mildest cases with the fewest pustules to prepare the material for inoculation. Cut price doctors, however ...