vaccination

The story

1. Latin · derived fromvacca“cow”
2. English todayvaccination

From vaccinia, a cowpox infection. Ultimately from Latin vacca (“cow”). Coined by Edward Jenner (1749-1823) in 1798. Jenner infected people with weakened cowpox viruses (vaccinia), to immunise them against smallpox. It is now known that vaccinia and cow pox are separate conditions, but at the time of Jenner, they were considered the same condition.

Words from the same roots