Oliver Hazard Perry — A Vaccinated Man!

The World Health Organization, in an article posted to their website newsroom, notes that smallpox was one of the deadliest diseases known to humans, and that to date, the only human disease to have been eradicated by vaccination.(1)  Global eradication of smallpox began in the 1960s, using a strategy of vaccination campaigns with a goal of 80% coverage.  An additional strategy, “surveillance-containment”, stopped transmission when the disease popped up among the unvaccinated – cases were reported, contacts were traced, and everyone in contact with the disease was vaccinated, effectively sealing off the disease from the rest of the population.(2)  

Smallpox vaccine is less safe than other vaccines routinely used today,(3) but a generation of people willingly took the vaccine so that they and their communities would be safe from this deadly disease, and it worked.  Routine vaccination against smallpox stopped in 1972 in the United States because the disease was eradicated here, and in 1980, the World Health Organization declared the threat of smallpox was eliminated worldwide.(4) 

Effective vaccination for smallpox began in 1796 when Edward Jenner inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with pus from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid Sarah Nelms.  The boy suffered mild symptoms.  Two months later, he inoculated Phipps with pus taken from a fresh human smallpox sore, testing to see if the boy would be protected against the disease.  Phipps remained healthy.(5) 

By the time Benjamin Waterhouse performed the first smallpox vaccinations in the United States on his children in 1800,(6) Oliver Hazard Perry was already a young U.S. Navy Midshipman, serving under his father’s command in USS General Greene.(7)  He learned first-hand how contagious disease could ravage the health of the crew of a Naval ship, living in close quarters.  While in the West Indies, yellow fever broke out among the crew, causing them to return to Newport, RI to check the progress of the disease, returning to the West Indies only after the crew had fully recovered.(8)  

Perry’s biographer, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, who was serving with him on USS Java in the Mediterranean (1816-17) writes of precautions Perry took to ensure the health of his Java crew: 

Previous to leaving the United States, the captain caused all the crew to be vaccinated who had not distinct marks of having been vaccinated previously.(9) 

In an era when vaccination had only just begun to be used as an important way to prevent disease, and procedures were crude, Oliver Hazard Perry wanted his crew to be fully protected from the deadly disease, smallpox.   

Mackenzie also notes that when they brought aboard thirty-six sailors who were not vaccinated from other ships to bring them back to the United States, eighteen of them were inoculated, using vaccine matter that (was) on board.  They recovered from the side effects of the vaccine almost immediately.(10)  Perry kept vaccine matter on board Java! 

The remaining eighteen who failed to report their status came down with smallpox. Four of them died.(11)

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(1) United Nations World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/smallpox-vaccines, retrieved 2/10/22. 

(2) Edward A. Belongia, MD and Allison L. Naleway, PhD. “Smallpox Vaccine: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1069029/ , retrieved 2/10/2022. 

(3) Ibid. 

(4) American Academy of Family Physicians, https://familydoctor.org/smallpox-vaccine/ , retrieved 2/10/2022. 

(5) Stefan Riedel, Md, PhD, “Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination”, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/ , retrieved 2/10/2022. 

(6) The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, “Benjamin Waterhouse”, https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/waterhouse-brings-vaccination-states , retrieved 2/11/2022. 

(7) Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, U.S.N., Commodore Perry, His Life and Achievements, (Akron, OH: The Werner Company, 1910), 23. 

(8) Ibid., 24. 

(9) Ibid., 354. 

(10) Ibid. 

(11) Ibid.