Edward Jenner and vaccination

• Smallpox was a very unpleasant and nasty disease that killed about 30% of those who caught it
• People who survived smallpox were almost always left permanently scarred and sometimes blind
• Smallpox affected people of all ages and backgrounds
• Inoculation


  Deliberately infecting a person with weakened smallpox to build immunity
• Inoculation could give the person the actual disease and was an unpleasant process
• In 1979, smallpox was declared extinct, the only human disease to be wiped out by medical action
• Edward Jenner


  An English country doctor who investigated a connection between cowpox and smallpox immunity
• Jenner's experiment


  1. Took cowpox matter from a milkmaid and inserted it into a young boy

  2. The boy developed a mild case of cowpox

  3. Jenner then infected the boy with smallpox but he did not contract the disease
• Vaccination


  Using cowpox to provide immunity to smallpox, named after the Latin word for cow (Vaca)
• Jenner's smallpox vaccine was not widely used right away, facing opposition and skepticism
• Opposition to Jenner's vaccine


  • Inoculators and doctors losing business
  • Concerns about a treatment linked to animals
  • Skepticism about Jenner as he was not a London doctor
• Jenner's work was an excellent example of using scientific methods of experimental inquiry
• Inoculation had limited impact on smallpox as it was risky and most people could not afford it
• Vaccination saved many lives and led to a significant fall in deaths from smallpox
• Vaccination was not enforced for many years, with governments slow to make it compulsory
• Vaccination did not immediately lead to breakthroughs for other diseases, as Jenner did not fully understand how it worked
• Later scientists like Pasteur and Koch built on Jenner's work to understand how vaccines work and develop vaccines for other diseases