Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner, was an English Physian and Scientist  who pioneered the concept of vaccines
including creating the smallpox vaccine, the world's first ever Vaccine The
terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae ('smallpox of the cow'), the term
devised by Jenner to denote Cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the long title of his Inquiry into the
Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the protective effect of cowpox
against smallpox.

In the West, Jenner is often called "the father of Immunology ", and his work is said to have "saved
more lives than the work of any other human" . In Jenner's time, smallpox killed around 10% of the
population, with the number as high as 20% in towns and cities where infection spread more easily.

Edward Jenner was born on 6 May 1749 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire , England .

When he was young, he went to school in Wotton-Under-Edge at Katherine Lady Berkeley's School and
in Cirencester During this time, he was Inoculated  for  Smallpox , which had a lifelong effect upon his
general health. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed for seven years to Daniel Ludlow,
a Surgeon of Chipping sodbury South Gloucestershire, where he gained most of the experience needed
to become a surgeon himself

In age 21 Jenner became apprenticed in surgery and anatomy under surgeon John Hunter and
others at St George Hospital, London , William osler  records that Hunter gave Jenner William
Harvey‘s advice, well known in medical circles , "Don't think; try."

Jenner became a successful Family doctor and surgeon, practising on dedicated premises at

Berkeley.

ORGIN OF THE VACCINE

Noting the common observation that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox, Jenner
postulated that the Pus in the blisters that milkmaids received from cowpox (a disease similar to
smallpox, but much less virulent) protected them from smallpox .

Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who was the son of
Jenner's gardener. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid
who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom, whose hide now hangs on the wall of
the George Medical school library . Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner's first paper
on Vaccination
Donald Hopkins has written, "Jenner's unique contribution was not that he inoculated a few persons
with cowpox, but that he then proved [by subsequent challenges] that they were immune to
smallpox. Moreover, he demonstrated that the protective cowpox pus could be effectively inoculated
from person to person, not just directly from cattle .

Jenner was later elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Art and Science  in
1802, a member of the American Philosophilcal society in 1804, and a foreign member of the Royal
Swedish Academy in 1806. In 1803 in London, he became president of the Jennerian Society,
concerned with promoting vaccination to eradicate  smallpox

Jenner was found in a state of Apoplexy on 25 January 1823, with his right side paralysed. He did
not recover and died the next day of an apparent stroke, his second, on 26 January 1823, aged 73.
He was buried in the family vault at the Church of St Mary, Berkeley

In 1980, the World Health Organization  declared smallpox an eradicated disease .