"Several accounts from the 1500s describe smallpox inoculation as practices in China and India (one is referred to in volume 6 of Joseph Needham’s Science and civilization in China). Glynn and Glynn, in the The Life and Death of Smallpox, note that in the late 1600s Emperor K’ang His, who had survived smallpox as a child, had his children inoculated. That method involved grinding up smallpox scabs and blowing the matter into nostril, inoculation may also have been practiced by scratching matter from a smallpox sore into the skin. It is difficult to point when the practice began, as some sources claim dates as early as 300 BCE."