[Two hundred years ago: the first smallpox vaccinations in Vienna].

The first successful smallpox vaccination with cowpox lymph outside of England was carried out in Vienna--only ten months after the publication of Edward Jenner's book "An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease ... known by the Name of the Cow Pox", and only a little more than three months after the first vaccinations in London: Two hundred years ago, on 30 April 1799, the medical service chief of Lower Austria, Dr. Paskal Joseph Ferro, born in Bonn, vaccinated his three children with vaccine which had come in a letter from London. Subsequently the vaccination was introduced in Austria. Before 1800 effective prophylactic immunizations against smallpox were carried out, apart from England, only in Vienna and environs. The first efficient vaccine to reach India also came from Vienna.