Biography

EdwardJenner and the FirstVaccination

DavidBardell Kean College of New Jersey Union, New Jersey 07083

Of all the diseases that have person inoculated and also to the apprenticeship, Jenner became

afflictedmankind, one of the most community. Inoculation with vari- impressed by the belief, commonly Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/39/7/440/35187/4445992.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 devastating was smallpox. The olous matterfrom a mildcase of the held by farm workers,that a person disease is highly contagious, and disease could give rise to severe who had previouslyhad cowpox was priorto preventivecontrol it spread smallpox. Furthermore,inoculated not susceptibleto smallpox.He was rapidlythrough the population.The smallpoxwas contagiousand some- already aware that cowpox caused death rate during epidemics fre- times caused epidemics of the only a milddisease in humanbeings, quently ranged from thirty to fifty disease. in markedcontrast to the horrorsof percent.Many of those who survived In 1798, EdwardJenner reported the dreaded smallpox. Jenner him- were hardly,if any, more fortunate that inoculation with cowpox pro- self had personal experience with than those who died, since they tected human beings from small- smallpox.When he was eight,he was were often seriously crippled or pox. The two diseases are closely inoculatedwith smallpox,and then blinded as well as having hideous related;but, unlike smallpox, cowpox shut up in a so -called inoculation pockmarkscarring of the body and causes a mild disease in human stable until the disease had run its face. Records from the sixteenth, beings. Moreover, inoculated cow- course. The experience changed seventeenth, and eighteenth cen- pox remainslocalized at the infection him from a healthyboy into a sickly turies indicatethat only twenty per- site of the inoculatedperson. Such one, and a numberof years passed cent of the populationescaped the was the dread of smallpox that before he regained good health. disease. In those days, a mother Jenner's discovery was accepted On occasion his brotherhad to with- feared to count her children until with relatively little opposition. draw him from school and tutorhim they had contracted and survived Today, because of Jennerian vac- at home because of his poor health. smallpox. cination,smallpox has been virtually It is believed that Jenner'ssuffering Centuriesago, it was noticed that eradicated from the world, and from inoculationcontributed to his persons who had recovered from within the next few months the interestin findinga bettermethod to smallpoxvery rarelycaught it again, World Health Organizationexpects preventsmallpox. and if they did it was not fatal.There- to announce complete elimination After completing his apprentice- fore, it was more advantageousto of the disease. Therefore,this is an ship in 1770 Jenner, on the recom- have suffereda mild case of small- appropriate time to reflect on mendation of Ludlow, went to pox, than to never have had the Edward Jenner and the eventful Londonfor advancedstudy withthe disease at all. A mild case gave pro- firstvaccination. eminent Scottish surgeon, John tection, whereas those who had EdwardJenner was born in 1749 Hunter. Hunter was very much never experienced smallpox lived at Berkeley, Gloucestershire, in impressed by Jenner's ability, and in fear of catchingit and of the possi- western England. His father, the asked him to remainin London and bilityof being subjectedto a severe vicarof Berkeley,died when Jenner practice surgery. Jenner declined and perhapsfatal case of the disease. was only five yearsof age, and there- the invitation.How much his pur- These observationsled to the prac- after he was broughtup by a much pose to investigate cowpox and tice of inoculation, the deliberate olderbrother and his wife.At the age smallpoxhad to do withthis decision infection with variolous (smallpox) of thirteen,Jenner, who was compe- is not known. matter taken from a pustule (pus- tent in school subjects,was appren- In 1773, at the age of twenty-four, containingblister) of a person with a ticed as he wishedto DanialLudlow, Jenner returned to Gloucestershire mild case of smallpox.The practice a surgeon in the nearby town of to practicesurgery in his home town involved considerable risk to the Sodbury. During his seven-year of Berkeley. At that time medicine

440 THEAMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, OCTOBER 1977 and surgery were separate profes- years of exacting investigations, Philosophical Transactions of the sions, but, physicians often per- Jenner had acquired enough infor- Royal Society. It was rejected, and he formed surgery, and surgeons mation to justify inoculation with was cautioned not to risk his reputa- frequently practiced medicine. This cowpox. "The matter was taken from tion by presenting to that learned was especially true in rural areas. In a sore on the hand of a dairymaid, body anything that appeared so 1775, for the first time since starting who was infected by her master's much at variance with established his practice, Jenner was able to turn cows, and it was inserted, on the 14th knowledge. In 1798 he published his attention to the scourge of small- of May, 1796, into the arm of the boy the work, together with additional pox. His initial studies were quite by means of two superficialincisions, cases of vaccination, at his own disconcerting and dampened his barely penetrating the cutis, each expense, and Jenner then had the enthusiasm. A considerable number about half an inch long. . .he was satisfaction of seeing vaccination of persons who reported having had inoculated the 1st of July following rapidly and successfully adopted in cowpox had subsequently become with variolous matter, immediately England and abroad. the victims of smallpox. After his taken from a pustule. Several slight disappointment eased, Jenner punctures and incisions were made References continued his investigations. A on both his arms and the matter Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/39/7/440/35187/4445992.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 thorough study was made of cow- carefully inserted, but no disease BARON, J. 1827. The life of Edward Jenner,Vol. 1; 1838, Vol. 2. London: pox. He discovered that cows were followed." HenryColburn. subject to a variety of skin eruptions, The dairymaid with cowpox was EBERLE, I. 1962. Edward Jenner and several of which could be transmitted Sarah Nelmes. The recipient of the smallpox vaccination. New York: to human beings. Furthermore, matter taken from one of several FranklinWatts, Inc. farming people commonly called all sores on her hands and wrists was FOSBROKE,T. D. 1821. Berkeley manuscripts.London: John Nichols these diseases cowpox. Jenner James Phipps, an eight-year-old and Son. classified the diseases as either true boy. Why was James Phipps the HENDERSON,D. A. 1976. The eradica- or spurious cowpox based on the subject of what has now become a tion of smallpox. Scientific American knowledge he gained. Jenner's pro- classical experiment in microbiology 235:25-33. fessional duties required him to and medicine, and how dangerous JENNER, E. 1798. An inquiry into the causes and effects of variolae vac- inoculation. administer smallpox was the procedure for the child? His cinae, a disease discovered in some of Such occasions gave him oppor- parents had requested that the the western counties of England, tunities to observe the effects of young boy be protected from small- particularly Gloustershire, and known smallpox inoculation on persons with pox by inoculation. The risk would be by the name of cow-pox. London: a previous history of true cowpox. no greater, and probably much less, SampsonLaw. He reported that "an efflorescence of than that of the usual method of a palish red colour soon appeared smallpox inoculation. Because of about the parts where the matter was this, and the prolonged and diligent inserted, but died away in a few days studies by Jenner, James Phipps was without producing any variolous not the victim of an unwise and rash symptoms." Jenner's studies were experiment. He would benefit greatly dependent upon cowpox and small- if inoculated cowpox protected him pox being present in or around against smallpox; if it did not, he Nothing in education is so astonish- Berkeley, and when the diseases faced the same danger and suffering ing as the amount of ignorance it disappeared his investigations were that would be associated with routine accumulates in the form of inert interrupted.The diseases were never smallpox inoculation, which he was facts. absent for very long, and further to have whether or not he received Henry James opportunities arose for studies on priorinoculation with cowpox. the course of naturally caught and Jenner conducted further experi- inoculated smallpox in patients with ments to confirm the success of the .. or without a history of cowpox. first vaccination (from vacca, the Education is . hanging around until Jenner also determined from case latin for cow). He also went on to you've caught on. studies that cowpox gave long-lasting demonstrate vaccination with cow- Robert Frost protection against smallpox. In 1792 pox matter taken directly from the Jenner was awarded a medical animal and to prove that inoculated degree by St. Andrew's University, cowpox, unlike inoculated smallpox, Let early education be a sort of Scotland, and he thus officially was not contagious. Jenner sub- amusement; you will then be better became a physician as well as a mitted information concerning the able to find out the naturalbent. surgeon. By 1796, after twenty-one first vaccination for publication in Plato

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