“Variolation” and Vaccination in Late Imperial China, Ca 1570–1911

S.A. Plotkin (ed.), History of Vaccine Development, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1339-5_2, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 The first reliable record of smallpox in China can be dated to the fifteenth century [1]. By early Song period, around the tenth century, smallpox had become essentially a childhood disease, but it remained one of the most fatal childhood diseases until the nineteenth century. Variolation using human pox against smallpox in China was one of the ancient popular inoculation practices existing in different parts of the world before Jennerian vaccination [2]. This chapter deals with its historical development and its importance in the introduction of Jennerian vaccination in the country during the early nineteenth century.