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A Brief History of Vaccination

The practice of inoculation--exposing a person to a mild case of an illness to build up an immunity--is possibly a thousand years old. Some evidence exists that 11th century Chinese physicians may have prevented the spread of smallpox by exposing people to pus from the sores of smallpox victims. There was a slight risk of actually giving a person smallpox through this form of inoculation, but it was a smaller risk than the much greater exposure they could get during an epidemic.

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