Catherine the Great was inoculated against smallpox 28 years before Jenner's vaccine.

1768 · 1796 · apart: 28 years

In 1768 the English doctor Thomas Dimsdale variolated her, and the grateful empress made him a baron with a lifelong pension.

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The event

• Jenner's first vaccination1796 · Berkeley, England. In May 1796 country doctor Edward Jenner inoculated young James Phipps with cowpox and showed it protected against smallpox. Vaccination was born — a method that saved hundreds of millions of lives and later made smallpox eradication possible.

18th century

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