I have a clear memory of noticing a distinct scar on my mother’s arm when I was a child. It sits high up, close to her shoulder, taking the appearance of what looks like a ring of small indents in her skin around a larger indent.

Don’t ask me why that specifically attracted my attention all those years ago; I don’t remember. I recall only that it did, but as is so often the case, I sort of forgot it existed over the following years.

Well, obviously I didn’t forget it existed (it’s still in the same place it always was, of course), but I did forget that at one point in time I was fascinated with what had caused it. Perhaps I asked my mother once and she explained. If she did, though, I forgot that as well.

That was until I helped an elderly woman off of a train one summer a few years back, and I happened to catch sight of the very same scar, in the very same place as my mother’s. Needless to say my interest was piqued, but with the train about to rumble on to my destination, I couldn’t exactly ask her about the origins of her scar.

Instead I called my mother, and she revealed that she in fact told me more than once – obviously my brain didn’t deem the answer important enough information to retain – and that her scar had come courtesy of the famous smallpox vaccine.

Smallpox is a viral, infectious disease that once terrorized us humans. It causes a significant skin rash and fever, and during the most rampant outbreaks in the 20th century, killed an estimated 3 out of 10 victims according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many other sufferers were left disfigured.

Thanks to a successful, widespread implementation of the smallpox vaccine, the virus was declared “extinct” in the United States in 1952. In fact, in 1972, smallpox vaccines ceased to be a part of routine vaccinations.