Share of total deaths due to smallpox in London 1629-1830

In each decade between 1629 and 1830 in London, smallpox was responsible for a significant portion of all deaths; having a share of nine or ten percent in the second half of the eighteenth century. After this peak, the discovery of vaccination by Edward Jenner in 1796 helped to bring this share of deaths back down to a similar share it had in the mid-1600s. The lack of statistical data from these early decades makes it difficult to explain why smallpox's share of total deaths was lower than the decades where inoculation (known as "variolation" when referring to smallpox) was in practice throughout Britain, after its introduction in the 1720s; this is possibly due to the impact of other infectious diseases from the time (for example, the bubonic plague was present in England until the late seventeenth century) or possibly the misreporting of data.

在1629年至1830年间的伦敦，痘疫在各个十年中均造成了大量死亡，其比例在18世纪后半叶达到了九至十个百分点。在此峰值之后，爱德华·琴纳于1796年发现了疫苗接种方法，从而帮助将死亡比例降低至与17世纪中叶相似的水平。由于早期几十年缺乏统计数据，难以解释为何痘疫在总死亡中所占的比例低于在整个英国实施接种（在1720年代引入时被称为‘痘苗接种’）的几十年；这可能是由于当时其他传染性疾病的影响（例如，腺鼠疫在英国一直存在至17世纪末）或可能是数据的误报。