By 1980, the killer disease smallpox had been eradicated thanks to a WHO vaccination campaign, but it was on this day in 1725 that the first five children in Ireland were vaccinated.
Five Dublin children received the first voluntary smallpox inoculations in Ireland on this day, August 26, 1725.
Smallpox was an acute and infectious disease caused by a virus. It was characterized by high fever and large sores on the body that left scars. The disease is estimated to have killed up to one-third of its victims. Those who were not killed were left with pockmarked skin or even blind.
The name "smallpox" was coined in the 15th century to distinguish it from "great pox", better known as syphilis. However, smallpox's history on Earth is believed to date back thousands of years.
In 1980, the World Health Organization officially declared smallpox eradicated after a ten-year, $300 million global vaccination program. The last recorded death from this disease was in Somalia in 1977.
Smallpox in Ireland
In Ireland, the spread of smallpox from the 1600s onward inspired dread. Ireland's poverty and ignorance of infectious disease, at the time, had seen typhoid and dysentery ravage communities.
Between 1661 and 1746, smallpox is believed to have been the cause of 20% of all deaths in Dublin city and a third of all children's deaths in the area. It should be pointed out that this highly infectious disease did not discriminate. The rich, as well as the poor, were badly affected.
Vaccine in Ireland
By the 18th century, hope emerged, and an inoculation technique was found. Since the 10th century, the Chinese have been inoculating people by using a small dose of the disease. The technique did not arrive in Europe for almost 800 years.
This technique was first tried on prisoners in Cork Jail in 1721, presumably against their will. Four years later, five children in Dublin received the inoculation on August 26, 1725.
Over the years, this technique has proven effective. The rich began to infest and inoculate their families. Throughout the 18th century, during periodic epidemics, the richer families were less affected.
By the middle of the 18th century, inoculation was in widespread use. The South Infirmary, in Cork, even initiated a program to inoculate the poor.
Sadly, of course, the unscrupulous saw an opportunity to profit as people queued up for treatment. In Donegal, in 1781, all but one child of a group of 52 died when an unqualified practitioner supposedly inoculated the group.
The Great Hunger
While inroads were being made against smallpox, the emergence of the Great Famine in Ireland (1845 – 1849) saw the disease return with a vengeance.
An illustration of a funeral during the Irish Famine.
This devastated even those who had found a way to make ends meet. Smallpox meant that even if you could survive the disease, you would be unable to work for some time, and many were pauperized by the lack of income and died eventually.
Eradication of smallpox
As Ireland emerged from the poverty and devastation of the Great Hunger, it was not until the 1880s that smallpox was more effectively eradicated in Ireland.
In the 1870s, over 7,000 died in Ireland from the disease. By the 1910s, this was down to just 65 people. From 1901 to 1910, almost 1 million Irish were inoculated.
The last outbreak of smallpox in Ireland was in 1903. In Dublin, 256 cases were found. Sadly, elsewhere around the world, even up to the 1960s, smallpox was rampant, killing up to two million lives per year and leaving millions more disfigured and blind.
Thankfully, by the 1980s, the WHO's World Vaccine Program had done its work, and now the world is free of this disease that had plagued the earth for thousands of years.
H/T: Myles Dungan / omicsonline.org.
* Originally published in 2020, updated in Aug 2026.
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