Jenner

• In 1796, a small town doctor from Gloucestershire, Edward Jenner, suspected he might have figured out a safer way to protect people from smallpox.
• He had learned that dairy maids were much less likely to catch smallpox, but did contract a far milder disease called cowpox.
• After spending time observing the dairy maids, he became certain that cowpox was giving them protection from the similar but more deadly disease smallpox.
• The person chosen to undertake the experiment was a young boy called James Phipps. Pus from the sores of a milkmaid who had cowpox was inserted into the boy, leading him to develop the same disease. After recovering, he was then given a dose of smallpox but did not catch the disease.
• Edward Jenner only concluded that cowpox protects humans from smallpox when he had repeated the experiment 23 more times.
• Even though Jenner conducted many experiments with positive results, there were many who rejected his ideas. In fact, he was forced to publish his own findings after the Royal Society refused to do it.
• The old inoculation methods were a lucrative business, which would be damaged if a safer method was introduced.
• Opposition was particularly great when the government made vaccination compulsory in the 1850s, because many resented the interference in their personal lives.
• A huge part of the problem was that Jenner could not explain how and why his vaccination worked, meaning others could not build upon or develop his work.
• Jenner’s scientific approach convinced many doctors at the time that he was right, and that vaccination worked. He gained many influential supporters, including members of the Royal Family, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States at the time.