Nobody can be truly said to “invent” the smallpox vaccine. The idea had been around since ancient times — contemporary writings of several prominent physicians of the Roman Empire suggested the possibility of exposing patients to a low-grade strain of smallpox to protect them against the full-strength one. In fact even the man who popularized the vaccine, Edward Jenner, was vaccinated himself. Those vaccinations were adopted sporadically and unevenly, but among the first ones was in Newfoundland.

On this day, June 2, in 1800, tracking the success of Edward Jenner in Britain, the Rev. John Clinch, a physician in the Newfoundland colony of British Canada, began vaccinations in Trinity, St. John’s and Portugal Cove.

Clinch used in Newfoundland many of the same tactics that Jenner used. He chose for his inoculations cowpox, a less virulent form of smallpox, prominent among the farmers at the time. Clinch’s vaccine was likely shipped to Newfoundland stored on pieces of glass and delivered to the patient by narrow pointed slivers of of ivory, the 18th-century version of hypodermic needles.