The act of giving a vaccine to a person or animal to protect them from a disease. It prepares the immune system to fight the disease in the future.
From 'vaccine' + '-ation', first used in the early 1800s. 'Vaccine' comes from Latin 'vacca' (cow) because the first vaccines used cowpox to protect against smallpox.
Vaccination owes its name to cows—early doctors noticed that milkmaids who caught cowpox didn’t get deadly smallpox. That cow-based trick became one of the most powerful health tools in human history.
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