Faith healing and vaccination against smallpox in nineteenth-century Japan

The total population in Japan remained stable for a long period of 126 years (1721 to 1846) and it started to steadily increase in the 1850s. 1 Jennerian vaccination against smallpox using cowpox virus was introduced in Japan during that period, which also witnessed the decline and end of the Tokugawa Shogunate ⽛ⶅⷽ⹄. The sharp decrease in smallpox mortality resulting from the generalization of vaccination probably had an important incidence on population growth in Japan.