[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Did not George Washington ban smallpox vaccinations because some of the troops were dying after getting vaccinated?

In those days, you took a healthy man with a weak case of smallpox, stuck a needle into one of his sores, then pricked a healthy person to give them immunity. Sometimes it did not work.

Pastor Johnathan Edwards died of such a vaccination.

[Calvin Locke]

Did not George Washington ban smallpox vaccinations ...

Did he? Saw a discussion on BookTV a year or so ago on vaccinations in Colonial America, and according to the author, GW told his stepson to ignore Martha, and get the inoculation.

I don't think the troop thing came up.

[JohnBovenmyer]

"Vaccination" hadn't been invented yet. What they had was "variolation" (smallpox = variola) which was what as you described. It worked because skin routes of infection took longer to kill than the usual respiratory routes, allowing the immune system time to respond. It did have a mortality risk, but one significantly smaller than the natural disease on the average. Smallpox was so contagious that those not already immune were likely to get the natural disease during an outbreak so the risk, on the average, was worth it. The colonies had 70 years experience validating variolation as a concept.

Washington had survived a fairly bad case of smallpox as a young man. My understanding is he supported variolation, ordering it for the Continental army in 1775. Maybe there were incidences of it being done improperly that lead to temporary exceptions; I don't know about any. Early in the war we lost our chance to conquer Quebec due to smallpox ravaging our forces. I'm still unsure whether to count that as a plus or a minus for smallpox. But I don't think smallpox had near as much effect later in the war.