>> At a Vestry held this 1 day of August 1784 Whereas the small pox now >> broke out in this parish, We do hearby [sic] Agree for the Church >> Wardens & Overseers to Gett a Man to Inoculate the inhabitence [sic] >Interesting, that they thought of doing that back then. > > I thought that was a bit early for Jenner, and I found this by Googling. > http://www.thedorsetpage.com/history/smallpox/smallpox.htm > Caroline In fact, although vaccination and inoculation are today pretty much synonymous, the 2 words originally referred to quite different methods - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innoculation which does a slightly clearer job of explaining the differences. In fact, inoculation against smallpox (in the original sense) was actually later banned in favour of vaccination, as it says in that Wikipedia article. Adrian B