There does seem to be some discrepancy, but I am going to go ahead and publish this bit of trivia because it seems accurate from what I can tell.  If it is wrong, feel free to correct me!  We all know that the smallpox vaccine was very successful, and I hadn’t realized that the roots of this vaccine go all the way back to Roman times.  Edward Jenner was the one who popularized this vaccine, and one of the first places where we find it being adopted is in Newfoundland.  On this date in 1800, Rev. John Clinch, a doctor in Newfoundland, began giving out smallpox vaccines at Trinity, St. John’s, and Portugal Cove.   Like Jenner, Clinch used “cowpox” in his vaccines, and it was probably stored on pieces of grass and given to the patient by narrow pointed slivers of ivory, the “hypodermic needles” of the era.  I am so glad that our shots aren’t like that any more!  And I can’t imagine going into the doctor and watching them take a vaccine off a piece of grass and put in a piece of ivory (that’s illegal, anyway)!

For more info:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1230874/

http://suite101.com/article/newfoundland-doctor-began-smallpox-vaccinations-a109402

http://ngb.chebucto.org/Articles/clinch2.shtml

http://famousdaily.com/history/first-smallpox-vaccination.html

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/QUEBEC-RESEARCH/2004-06/1086176017