prevention of disease

• Edward Jenner (summarised)


  • Background: 1749 - 1823 and Doctor in Gloucestershire
  • Achievements: discovered Vaccination (1796) for smallpox, James Phipps, Sarah Nelmes, Cowpox. Support - Napoleon, money from Parliament. Opposition - doctors
  • Factors- built on- Harvey (circulation), inoculation (from China and Turkey), government (money from parliament)
• Not everyone was convinced of vaccination. By the 1880s there was a strong anti-vaccination league which still exists today.
• Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was a country doctor who studied medicine in London. As a doctor he had vaccinated patients against smallpox. Working in the country, Jenner heard milkmaids didn’t catch smallpox and set out to know why. He discovered that they did catch cowpox (a much milder disease than smallpox) and reasoned that this must make them immune to smallpox. He experimented and proved this true, calling his new idea vaccination.
• Reasons for opposition to change:

  • People who charged to provide vaccinations were worried they would lose income
  • People thought smallpox was a punishment from God and should just be accepted
  • Cowpox was a disease of cattle and people though it was unnatural to put an animal disease into humans
• Smallpox was finally eradicated in 1980 after a huge vaccination campaign all over the world.
• Smallpox is a contagious disease – a disease spread from one person to another through direct contact. It was widespread in Britain in the 18th century and spread very quickly, killing many people. Ideas about what caused the disease started to change and people like Edward Jenner began to look for new ways of preventing disease, eventually coming up with vaccinations.