Back in 1796, Edward Jenner took blister material from someone infected with cowpox, and used that material to protect someone from getting the deadly disease smallpox.
Testing out his theory on several children including his own 11-month-old son (who survived), this was the first example of an arm-to-arm inoculation, and became the world's very first vaccine.
Now, more than 300 years since that incredible discovery, thousands of people across the world are turning out in their droves to defy Jenner's research, putting millions of people at risk in the process.
Anti-vaxxers, as they're sometimes known, don't have the best of reputations online, and one such woman came in for some heavy criticism for an ill-advised question on Facebook.
For parents who decide to forego vaccinations in the modern age, the target of their ire is typically the MMR vaccine - a series of shots administered usually at around 12 to 15 months which is designed to inoculate children against measles, mumps and rubella.
There is a belief in some corners of the internet that the shots cause autism in young children (based on a now-debunked study), and rather than take the risk, some mothers are choosing to eschew the practice. But one Facebook mother is getting quite a lot of criticism for asking for help with managing an outbreak of measles in her home state.
"My 3 year old is not vaccinated," she began in her Facebook post, "and there is currently a measles outbreak in my state. Any suggestions for precautions I can take to protect her would be very much appreciated."
Now, for many people who have taken the vaccine or given the vaccine to their children, the answer here is apparent. But Facebook users took the time to roast the mother on her anti-vaxxing views, and some of the comments on her thread are hilarious.
Alyssa Adame opted for sarcasm - the lowest form of wit, to some people, but for me it's also the funniest: "If only they made some type of vaccination to prevent the child from getting it..."
Apart from being somewhat misguided, not vaccinating children can be dangerous, and one mother pointed this out emphatically.
"It's not about YOUR kids, it's about the immunocompromised children that your kids are going to KILL because they rely on literally NO ONE near them getting these viruses," Mia Marie Migliaccio Hernandez said.
All joking aside, the anti-vaxxer movement is thought to have played a part in reintroducing diseases that were thought eliminated back into communities. Measles, for example, is a disease that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) thought we had eliminated back in 2000:
"Measles was declared eliminated (absence of continuous disease transmission for greater than 12 months) from the United States in 2000. This was thanks to a highly effective vaccination program in the United States, as well as better measles control in the Americas region."
While the outbreak of previously eliminated diseases can bring with its own problems, let's take a moment to enjoy some schadenfreude and dark humour.
