Jenner, Edward

Jenner, Edward (1749-1823), doctor, b. Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England.

In Dr. Edward Jenner's time, the disease of smallpox often broke out in England.

Smallpox spreads easily and thirty out of every one hundred people who caught it would die. Others were crippled or disfigured.

Working at Berkeley, Jenner became interested in a story he heard. This was that dairymaids who caught cowpox never caught smallpox. Cowpox was a mild disease which caused only a few sores on the hands.

On 14 May, 1796, Jenner took fluid from a sore on a dairymaid's hand and injected this into an eight-year-old boy named James Phipps. Seven weeks later, Jenner injected some smallpox germs into the boy and he did not develop smallpox. After making more experiments like this, Jenner wrote a book about his work and went to London to tell doctors there about it.

Instead of praising him, they made fun of him and he went back to Berkeley disappointed. But he did not give up his work. In 1799 he wrote a second book and this time people took notice of him. His method of preventing smallpox was being used from 1800.

He called it vaccination because the fluid used for the injection was obtained from a cow and the Latin word for cow is vacca.

To help him in his work, Parliament later gave him £30,000.

See Edward Jenner Vaccination Against Smallpox