As a child, I remember noticing a scar on my mother’s arm, positioned high near her shoulder. It looked like a ring of small indents surrounding a larger one, and it always caught my attention. I can’t quite remember why it stood out to me back then, but I do recall being curious about it.
Over time, though, I forgot about the scar and its mystery. I didn’t forget that it was there, but the reason behind it faded from my mind. Perhaps I asked my mother about it once, but whatever explanation she gave didn’t stick with me.
A few years later, everything changed. One summer, I helped an elderly woman off a train, and I saw a scar in the same spot on her arm. This immediately sparked my curiosity again. However, the train was moving on, and I didn’t have time to ask her about it. So, I called my mother. She told me that she had already explained it to me multiple times before – I simply hadn’t remembered. Her scar, she said, was from the smallpox vaccine.
Smallpox was a deadly disease that caused severe rashes, fever, and sometimes death. In the early 20th century, smallpox killed about 3 out of 10 people who caught it. Thanks to the smallpox vaccine, it was eradicated in the U.S. by 1952. The vaccine was so effective that by 1972, it was no longer part of routine vaccinations.
Before that time, though, every child received the vaccine, and it left a very noticeable mark. It was like a “vaccine passport”, a clear sign that someone had been vaccinated.
The scar was a result of how the vaccine was given. It was applied using a two-pronged needle that made multiple punctures in the skin. This caused bumps to form, which turned into blisters, burst, and eventually scabbed over, leaving the scar. And that’s how my mother got her mark.
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