It is believed to have originated somewhere in India or China. Around the 18th century, a group of Brahmins called Tikadaar, carried out the inoculation. They would pick out scabs from the skin of infected people, the hardened scar tissue formed due to this disease. Then they would prick the hand of a healthy person with an iron needle, and then they would put the infected scabs on the pricked skin.
Inoculation has been mentioned in the 11th century in China, when the Buddhist monks living in Tibet’s mountains, collected these scabs and turned them into powder, and blew this powder into the nose of a healthy person. These techniques spread from India and China reached the Ottoman Empire and later Europe as well. But there was a huge problem with this procedure of inoculation. What was the guarantee that the small dose of the virus used to infect people wouldn’t actually kill them? There were none.
This is why 1%-2% of people died due to inoculation. They contracted smallpox and died a painful death. But 1%-2% death rate was much better than the 30% death rate. So many people preferred being inoculated. The second problem was that the people who were inoculated were left with these permanent scars. Their faces looked like this. The third problem was that this was contagious. The inoculated people were spreading the virus all over the world.
