Did George Washington Require Soldiers to Be Vaccinated in 1777?
The answer is yes, though what we call a “vaccine” didn’t exist in 1777. Instead, people protected themselves from the deadly smallpox virus by inhaling crushed smallpox scabs (gross!) or having their skin scraped with someone else’s smallpox pus (grosser!). The practice was controversial, as you can imagine, but in 1777, rising







