This is a genuine photograph that was taken in the early 1900s by Dr. Allan Warner of the Isolation Hospital at Leicester in the UK. Warner photographed a number of smallpox patients in order to study the disease.

The two photographed boys were the same age and both had smallpox. The only difference is that one of them was vaccinated and the other was not. The smallpox vaccine was one of the oldest man-made vaccines that many people refused to inject due to fear and superstition, and as a result the disease was not completely eradicated.

Dr. Warner believed that the best way to challenge fear and misinformation about vaccination was to show the horror of the disease and the clear evidence of vaccination in the workplace through photography. Smallpox was eradicated worldwide after widespread vaccination in the 1960s and 1970s in the early 1980s.

The Internet Archive has digitized the atlas of clinical medicine, surgery, and pathology. From page 426, you can see various pictures that anti-vaxxers probably don’t want you to see.

Vaccination has helped us to survive, and it’ll do the same in future.