According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Vaccine is a substance given to stimulate the body's production of antibodies and provide immunity against a disease without causing the disease itself in the treatment, prepared from the agent that causes the disease(or a related,also effective, but safer disease), or a synthetic substitute.
Vaccine was first introduced by Edward Jenner, a British physician in 1796. He used the cowpox virus,vaccinia, to confer protection against Small pox. Consequently, after some years, a french microbiologist, Louis Pasteur,1881, demonstrated immunization against Anthrax, using sheep by injecting them with a formula which contains weakened forms of the Bacillus that causes the disease. Four years later,he developed a protective suspension against rabies.
In the United States of America, the Supreme court ruled that laws could require vaccinations to protect the public from dangerous transmittable diseases. After the World War II, there is the imposition of compulsory vaccination on all citizens. The Smallpox, which is at the bane of existence of the vaccine was in 1959 called by the World Health Organization (WHO) for an eradication, worldwide. The vaccine has then since been used in more than 50 countries to curtail pandemics such as flu and the recent Coronavirus that ravaged the world.
