Treatments
Vaccination
Also Known As Immunization
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Vaccination is the deliberate administration of a weakened, killed or related antigen to produce protective immunity against a specific disease before natural exposure occurs. As an ongoing medical practice it grew directly out of Edward Jenner's 1796 demonstration that prior cowpox infection protected against smallpox, and it expanded over the following two centuries into a routine preventive treatment covering dozens of diseases, from diphtheria and polio to measles and, more recently, human papillomavirus and COVID-19.
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Annual reformulated vaccines targeting the season's predicted circulating strains are the primary tool; effectiveness varies year to year with how closely the vaccine matches the strains actually circulating.
Vaccination prevents infection rather than treating active disease; Salk's 1955 inactivated vaccine and Sabin's 1961 oral vaccine are the historically relevant instances recorded on this atlas under the general Vaccination entity.
Vaccination prevents smallpox infection rather than curing active disease. Edward Jenner's 1796 use of cowpox material to confer immunity is the founding act of vaccination itself and of this atlas's own Vaccination entity.
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