After catching smallpox as a teenager and living with the scars on his face to prove it, Washington knew how deadly the disease could be. As regiments from the south planned to march north, he took drastic action to prevent them from catching the disease once they reached Philadelphia. Smallpox was attacking his soldiers, and given the close quarters at camp, there was little he could do to prevent its spread. Under this assumption, the Continental Congress had banned inoculations in 1776.īy February of the following year, however, Washington was desperate. Despite the life-saving benefits of the vaccine, many officials distrusted the science and blamed the inoculation for spreading the disease. The vaccinated patient usually contracted a milder case of smallpox, rendering them immunized against potentially deadlier strains in the future. To administer the vaccine, doctors lanced a pustule of an infected patient and then sliced the same knife under the skin of a healthy individual. While 18th-century Americans didn’t fully understand the science behind smallpox, they knew that it seemed to break out in crowded areas - like big cities or military camps - and killed one-third of all who contracted the disease.ĭoctors in Massachusetts first deployed a crude vaccine in the 1720s, and leading figures, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Martha Washington, received the inoculation.
During the Revolutionary War, smallpox was the biggest threat to the Continental Army, threatening to inflict far more damage on the troops than the British forces. declared independence from Great Britain. It began with George Washington in 1777, less than one year after the U.S. While these mandates are the first vaccine requirements for COVID-19, the United States has a long history of protecting the nation’s health through vaccines. Andrew Cuomo of New York have issued similar orders for their states.
Last week, President Biden issued a new order requiring all federal employees, as well as all employees at the Veterans Administration, to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or undergo a strict testing and masking program.
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