Edward Jenner and vaccination

• Vaccine


  A substance that stimulates the body to produce antibodies to provide immunity against a disease
• Inoculation


  Putting a low dose of a disease into the body to help it fight against a more serious attack of the disease
• Smallpox was a deadly disease in the 18th century, killing more children each year than any other disease and also killing thousands of adults
• Those who survived smallpox were left with scars that often left them feeling isolated (left out) in their communities
• Before Jenner's vaccine, inoculation was being used to prevent smallpox, but this was a risk as each person was receiving the real disease into their body, and if the dose was too strong, the person could develop smallpox and die
• Edward Jenner


  A country doctor in Gloucestershire who observed that milkmaids who caught the mild disease cowpox did not go on to catch smallpox
• Jenner's experiment to test his theory about smallpox

  1. Selected a healthy eight-year-old boy called James Phipps

  2. Took cowpox from a sore on a milkmaid's hand and inserted it into Phipps' body via two cuts

  3. Observed that Phipps experienced uneasiness, a loss of appetite and a headache as a result of the mild disease but became well again

  4. Phipps was then inoculated with smallpox, but no disease followed
• Jenner repeated his experiment 23 times to prove his theory
• Vaccination


  Jenner's method of preventing people from catching smallpox by injecting them with cowpox, because 'vacca' is the Latin word for 'cow'
• There was a lot of opposition to the smallpox vaccine from some doctors who were making a lot of money from inoculation and didn't want to lose that income, and from the Church who did not like the idea of using a disease from cows in human medicine
• The Royal Society refused to publish Jenner's ideas because of this opposition
• Government intervention to increase use of the smallpox vaccine

  1. In 1852, the government made the vaccine compulsory

  2. After 1872, this was strictly enforced, with people fined for not having their children vaccinated
• The result of government involvement was a rapid fall in deaths from smallpox
• In 1980 the World Health Organisation announced that smallpox had been completely wiped out