TY - JOUR T1 - Smallpox and its control in Canada JF - Canadian Medical Association Journal JO - CMAJ SP - 1543 LP - 1547 VL - 161 IS - 12 AU - John W.R. McIntyre AU - C. Stuart Houston Y1 - 1999/12/14 UR - http://www.cmaj.ca/content/161/12/1543.abstract N2 - Edward Jenner's first treatise in 1798 described how he used cowpox material to provide immunity to the related smallpox virus. He sent this treatise and some cowpox material to his classmate John Clinch in Trinity, Nfld., who gave the first smallpox vaccinations in North America. Dissemination of the new technique, despite violent criticism, was rapid throughout Europe and the United States. Within a few years of its discovery, vaccination was instrumental in controlling small-pox epidemics among aboriginal people at remote trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company. Arm-to-arm transfer at 8-day intervals was common through most of the 19th century. Vaccination and quarantine eliminated endemic smallpox throughout Canada by 1946. The last case, in Toronto in 1962, came from Brazil. ER -