have it now in our power to communicate the benefits of this important discovery to every part of India, perhaps to China and the whole eastern world". Subsequently, vaccination became firmly established in British India. A vaccination campaign was started in the new British colony of Ceylon in 1803. By 1807 the British had vaccinated more than a million Indians and Sri Lankans against smallpox. Also in 1803 the Spanish Balmis Expedition launched the first transcontinental effort to vaccinate people against smallpox. Following a smallpox epidemic in 1816 the Kingdom of Nepal ordered smallpox vaccine and requested the English veterinarian William Moorcroft to help in launching a vaccination campaign. In the same year a law was passed in Sweden to require the vaccination of children against smallpox by the age of two. Prussia briefly introduced compulsory vaccination in 1810 and again in the 1920s, but decided against a compulsory vaccination law in 1829. A law on compulsory smallpox vaccination was introduced in the Province of Hanover in the 1820s. In 1826, in Kragujevac, future prince Mihailo of Serbia was the first person to be vaccinated against smallpox in the principality of Serbia. Following a smallpox epidemic in 1837 that caused 40,000 deaths, the British government initiated a concentrated vaccination policy, starting with the Vaccination Act of 1840, which provided for universal vaccination and prohibited variolation. The Vaccination Act 1853 introduced compulsory smallpox vaccination in England and Wales. The law followed a severe outbreak of smallpox in 1851 and 1852. It provided that the poor law authorities would continue to dispense vaccination to all free of charge, but that records were to be kept on vaccinated children by the network of births registrars. It was accepted at the time, that voluntary vaccination had not reduced smallpox mortality, but the Vaccination Act 1853 was so badly implemented that it had little impact on the number of children vaccinated in England and Wales. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld compulsory vaccination laws in the 1905 landmark case Jacobson v. Massachusetts, ruling that laws could require vaccination to protect the public from dangerous communicable diseases. However, in practice the U.S. had the lowest rate of vaccination among industrialized nations in the early 20th century. Compulsory vaccination laws began to be enforced in the U.S. after World War II. In 1959, the WHO called for the eradication of smallpox worldwide, as smallpox was still endemic in