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Edward Jenner (1749-1823)
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Edward Jenner was born at his father's vicarage at Berkeley, Gloucestershire,
England, on May 17, 1749. After leaving school, he was apprenticed to a local surgeon, and
in 1770 he went to London and became a resident pupil under the great surgeon and
anatomist, John Hunter, with whom he remained on intimate terms for the rest of Hunter's
life. In 1773 he took up practise at Berkeley, where, except for numerous visits to
London, he spent the rest of his life. He died of apoplexy on January 26, 1823.
Jenner's scientific interests were varied, but the importance of his work in
vaccination has overshadowed his other results. Early in his career he had begun to
observe the phenomena of cowpox, a disease common in the rural parts of the western
counties of England, and he was familiar with the belief, current among the peasantry,
that a person who had suffered from the cowpox could not take smallpox. Finally, in 1796,
he made his first experiment in vaccination, inoculating a boy of eight with cowpox, and,
after his recovery, with smallpox; with the result that the boy did not take the latter
disease.
Jenner's first paper on his discovery was never printed; but in 1798 appeared the
first of the following treatises. Its reception by the medical profession was highly
discouraging; but progress began when Cline, the surgeon of St. Thomas' Hospital, used the
treatment with success. Jenner continued his investigations, publishing his results from
time to time, and gradually gaining recognition; though opposition to his theory and
practise was at first vehement, and has never entirely disappeared. In 1802, Parliament
voted him 10,000, pounds and in 1806, 20,000, pounds in recognition of the value of his
services, and the sacrifices they had entailed. As early as 1807, Bavaria made vaccination
compulsory; and since that date most of the European governments have officially
encouraged or compelled the practise; and smallpox has ceased to be the almost universal
scourge it was before Jenner's discovery.
James Gillray (1757-1815):
"The Cow Pock or the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!"
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