The Swiss Canton of Thurgau – not the Kingdom of Bavaria—was the first state to introduce compulsory vaccination against smallpox

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries introduced compulsory vaccination. Even earlier, in the infancy of the vaccination tradition, there used to be instances of compulsory vaccination against smallpox, one of the deadliest known enemies of human health until its utter eradication in 1980.

In the scientific literature, the Kingdom of Bavaria (1805–1918) is often reported to have been the first state entity to have introduced compulsory vaccination in 1807. Nonetheless, it was the Canton of Thurgau (Kanton Thurgau or Thurgovia, Fig. 1a), in Eastern Switzerland, that first issued such an ordinance in 1806...