Word: vaccinia
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Edward Jenner had found, before 1800, an empirical method of protecting man against one dread disease now known to be caused by a virus: infection with cowpox ("vaccinia," hence the general term vaccination) would ward off later infection with the deadly and disfiguring smallpox (so called to distinguish it from syphilis, "the great pox"). Louis Pasteur achieved a similar triumph of empiricism. Unable to isolate the microbe of rabies, he simply assumed that it was too small to be seen and developed the Pasteur treatment for victims of bites by rabid animals...