Vaccine Coloring Page

In 1796 an English country doctor named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught a mild disease called cowpox from cows didn't seem to catch smallpox, a deadly illness. He tested his idea, and it worked, protecting people from smallpox. The word "vaccine" comes from vacca, the Latin word for cow.

Smallpox had killed millions of people for thousands of years. Thanks to vaccines it became the first disease humans wiped out completely, and in 1980 the world announced it was gone. Vaccines now protect people from many other diseases too.