Tucked away in a cabinet on the fifth floor of the National Museum of American History are rows of tiny bottles, boxes and needles. Acrid whiffs of evaporating medicine hint at their purpose. These ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. The Louisiana Purchase was still two years ...

Dr. Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine for smallpox in 1796. Vaccines have helped protect people from serious diseases by building up the immune response. The practice of introducing small ...

Throughout the course of human history, one infectious disease (Figure 1) may account for more deaths than any other, perhaps all others combined. Smallpox mortality falls between 20% and 50%. Until ...

On May 8, 1980, forty-five years ago, the World Health Organization, a part of the United Nations, announced that officials had eradicated smallpox from the world’s population. The last case occurred ...