VICTORY OVER THE SCALY DEATH: FIRST SMALLPOX TRIAL VACCINATIONS IN BERLIN

Today in Berlin: 7 June, 1802

By the late eighteenth century each year in Europe, smallpox - a highly infectious and potentially lethal disease which is also the only completely eradicated infectious disease in human history - killed 400,000 people.

It did not make a detour around anyone, including Austrian emperor, king of Spain, Russian tsar, Swedish queen and French monarch. At best it left its victims scarred for life (like Stalin, who contracted smallpox at the age of 7), or blind and/or deaf: Beethoven’s deafness is contributed to his contact with the disease and Johannes Kepler’s vision was quite limited after he suffered as bout of smallpox as a baby (later he would lose his wife and one of three children to the disease). At worst, it killed its victims after many days of vile suffering.

That’s why after in 1801 nearly 1,700 people died of smallpox - then known as Blattern - in Berlin, on June 7, 1802 successful trial smallpox inoculations (carried out mostly on Berlin orphans) began…