Event Date

1898

Included in All Dates?

Yes

Unique ID

97

Arm-to-arm smallpox vaccine transmission was banned in Great Britain. As the Royal Commission of 1896 noted, lymph from calves was safer than human lymph, which sometimes contributed to the spread of diseases such as syphilis and hepatitis. Bovine vaccines eliminated the danger of human infections being passed on from the lymph material. Countries on the Continent had been steadily moving to the use animal vaccine since the mid-1860s.