I used to be amused when period pieces would show actresses (particularly European) in sleeveless attire with their smallpox vaccine scar, three feet tall in the closeup shots.

Turns out smallpox vaccines are a lot older than I thought. They might have not looked exactly like that in Victorian England, but an iteration of it did already exist. Guess that's why they cover up tattoos but not smallpox scars.

Yeah the first effective Smallpox vaccines were almost 230 years ago, and actually predates the Victorian era by a couple of decades.

Vaccination through exposing healthy people to smallpox to build immunity goes back to like 200 BCE. [1]

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccinati...

I know many people in my country, Spain, who are 60+ and have smallpox vaccine scars.

Yeah the movies I'm thinking of, those people would be 40-60 today, maybe a little bit older.

I used to have a smallpox scar but it eventually faded away. I am in my 50s.