Smallpox inoculation (variolation)
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Was smallpox inoculation practised in India before it reached Europe in 1721 and before Jenner's vaccine in 1796?
Independent discoveriesMedicine & health
Indian claim
Practitioners in Bengal and Odisha deliberately infected healthy people with material from smallpox sores to give a mild case and lifelong protection, a practice known as tika.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- J.Z. Holwell's 1767 account, published in London, describes Brahmin inoculators in Bengal, their preparation diet and aftercare.
- Oliver Coult in 1731 reported that the practice in Bengal was already about 150 years old.
Commonly credited to
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu brought variolation from Ottoman Turkey to England in 1721. Edward Jenner introduced safer cowpox vaccination in 1796.
Evidence for the other claim
- Variolation is also recorded in China by the 16th century, in the Ottoman Empire and in parts of Africa, so India was one of several places that knew it.
- Some details of Holwell's account have been questioned by historians.
- Jenner's cowpox vaccine (James Phipps, 14 May 1796) was a different, safer method, and it is the ancestor of modern vaccination.
What historians and scientists say
India had a real, well-reported tradition of variolation in the east of the country before Europe adopted it. It arose in several societies, and cowpox vaccination was Jenner's.