Vaccination builds on older inoculation traditions

Onesimus, enslaved by Cotton Mather, had earlier described an African inoculation method that shaped advocacy during the epidemic.

Boylston treated his own son and two people he enslaved, while Asian, African and Ottoman variolation practices long predated Boston’s experiment.

Jenner transferred material from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes’s cowpox lesion to the eight-year-old boy.

Sarah Nelmes supplied the cowpox material used in the experiment; she should be included in the account of the procedure.

The date marks Phipps’s cowpox inoculation, not the later challenge that tested whether he was protected.

Morton administered ether while Warren operated on Abbott at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Abbott was the patient in a highly publicized demonstration; earlier ether procedures also existed.

The public operation helped spread the use of inhaled anesthesia in surgery.

The demonstration showed that ether could reduce pain; the quality and completeness of Abbott’s anesthesia have been debated.

At a gathering in Edinburgh, Simpson, Keith and Duncan inhaled chloroform and observed its anesthetic effects.