Edward Jenner (1749–1823)

The English physician Edward Jenner (Fig. 34.1) is regarded as the founder of modern vaccination, but he was by no means the first to try the technique. The ancient practice of ‘variolation’ dates back to tenth-century China, and arrived in Europe in the early eighteenth century via Turkey. The technique involved the inoculation of children with dried material from healed scabs of mild smallpox cases, and was a striking foretaste of the principles of modern attenuated viral vaccines. This practice was, however, both inconsistent and dangerous, and Jenner’s innovation was to show that a much safer and more reliable protection could be obtained by deliberate inoculation with cowpox (vaccinia) virus. Milkmaids exposed to cowpox were traditionally known to be resistant to smallpox and so retained their smooth complexions. In 1796, Jenner tested his theory by inoculating 8-year-old James Phipps with liquid from a cowpox pustule on the hand of Sarah Nelmes. Subsequent inoculation of the boy with smallpox produced no disease. Although greeted with scepticism at first, Jenner’s ideas soon became accepted, and he went on to inoculate thousands of patients in a shed in the garden of his house at Berkeley, Gloucestershire. He ultimately achieved world fame, though his fellowship of the Royal Society was conferred for a quite different piece of work on the nesting habits of the cuckoo!