Inoculation and Smallpox

Inoculation carried a mortality rate of 2.5 while, like you said, natural infection was upwards of 30. Inoculation became patchy popular throughout the 18th century but was dethroned by vaccination in 1793. You're probably somewhat familiar with this story or at least the name of it's star, Edward Jenner. Eddie was just going about his life as a country doctor when he noticed that milkmaids who had once been infected with cowpox never got smallpox.