Science & Technical Reports: Frequently Asked Questions

The page you are referencing "George Washington and the First Mass Inoculation" was written in 2007 by a visiting scholar with the Library's Kluge Center. We can no longer maintain this page and it has been removed from our website.

It is still possible to access an archived version of the page from the Internet Archive, by viewing one of the archived snapshots from 2021 or prior.

If you are interested in learning about General Washington and smallpox vaccination during the American Revolutionary War, you may wish to explore the Library's digital collection George Washington's Papers. Search the collection using keywords: smallpox, inoculation

Also of interest is the entry on Smallpox from Mt. Vernon's Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington and the National Park Service's article Smallpox, Inoculation, and the Revolutionary War.

Should you be looking for research articles on the topic you might wish to search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database using keywords such as smallpox, inoculation, variolation, vaccination, George Washington, or Revolutionary War. You can find articles such as the following (article title is linked to an open access digital copy):

• Liebowitz D. Smallpox vaccination: an early start of modern medicine in America. Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives. 2017; 7(1):61-63.
• Riedel S. Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination. Proceedings: Baylor University Medical Center. 2005; 18(1):21-25.
• Thursfield H. Smallpox in the American War of Independence. Annals of Medical History.1940;2(4):312-318.
• Weiss RA, Esparza J. The prevention and eradication of smallpox: a commentary on Sloane (1755) 'An account of inoculation'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London: B. 2015; 370(1666):20140378.

To find historical and contemporary books about smallpox vaccination you can search LC's Online Catalog or browse titles using the subject headings Smallpox--Vaccination and then further focus by country or time period. You can find books such as the following (linked title is to LC's catalog record):

Fenn, Elizabeth A. (Elizabeth Anne). Pox Americana : the great smallpox epidemic of 1775-82. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.

You can also browse the subjects Smallpox--History in the Library's online catalog. You can find books such as the following (linked title is to LC's catalog record):

Hopkins, Donald R. The greatest killer: smallpox in history, with a new introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2002.

Also of interest are books on the subject, Military Medicine--History--United States.