Poster offering a reward for notification of smallpox
Colour lithograph after René Gauch, 1960s
Smallpox is an acute contagious disease which for centuries
decimated populations whenever outbreaks occurred. No effective
treatment was ever developed but, in the late 18th century, Edward
Jenner demonstrated that innoculation with cowpox could protect
against smallpox. Vaccination programmes over the next 150 years,
intensified in the 1960s by the World Health Organisation (WHO),
along with other public health efforts meant that in 1979 the WHO
was able to confirm that smallpox had been eradicated.