I remember noticing a strange scar on my mother’s upper arm when I was a child—small indents forming a ring around a larger mark. It caught my attention for some reason, though I eventually forgot about it.
Years later, I saw the exact same scar on an elderly woman while helping her off a train. That sight brought the memory back, but I couldn’t ask her about it. I later called my mother, who reminded me she had explained it before: it was from the smallpox vaccine.
Smallpox was once a deadly infectious disease that killed many and left survivors disfigured. Thanks to a global vaccination campaign, it was declared eradicated in the U.S. in 1952, and routine vaccinations stopped in the 1970s.
Back then, the vaccine was given with a special multi-pronged needle that punctured the skin several times to reach deeper layers. This caused a reaction: bumps, blisters, then scabbing. As it healed, it left a permanent circular scar.
That scar—common in people of that generation—became a lasting mark of vaccination against smallpox.