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Sherborne and World's First Recorded Vaccination*

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Sherborne and World's First Recorded Vaccination* ‘I DIDN’T KNOW THAT’ SERIES SHERBORNE AND WORLD’S FIRST RECORDED VACCINATION* S.C. ROY uring our visit to England, we had the experience eggs laid by hens who are free to move around and feed of living in the English countryside. We stayed in on grain and insects from the field. Longburton. Longburton is a village in the county D Sherborne is the nearest town (3 miles) from of Dorset, inhabited by only 400 people! As you can Longburton, which is known for its castle and Abbey. We imagine, this is a different kind of experience altogether visited Sherborne quite often walking freely along Cheap for anyone living in a place (Kolkata) populated by more Street (where no vehicles were allowed during the day) than 10 million people. Other than us, what we saw in a with shops on the two sides of the street, visiting the Public day were 35 sheep, 26 crows, 5 hens, 8 geese, a few robins, Library and then having tea and scones in the proper two hares in and around the farm beside our garden. I had English way in a local café. I DIDN’T KNOW that not heard ‘free range egg’s earlier. Free range eggs are Sherborne (more exactly Yetminster, a village near Sherborne) is the place known for the world’s First Recorded Vaccination. The history of vaccination is a sensitive issue with so many claims and counter-claims of being the ‘first’ by different groups which I realized while attending a meeting in New Delhi. Without going into the debate of the origin of vaccination from the period as early as 1000 BCE in India, and widely practiced during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China, Jenner is usually Abbey at Sherborne given the credit of introducing small pox inoculation in a small boy named * This series originates from our visit to England and the USA in the summer of 2014. This is not a travelogue, neither it is an James Phipps in 1796. But actually vaccination was informative document on the places that we visited. These are reported to be administered about a quarter century before some of the facts which I DIDN'T KNOW before this travel. I that at Sherborne. hope our readers will enjoy reading it as many of the facts may not be known to all the readers of the journal. The author In 1774, the area of Sherborne was ravaged by may be reached at: [email protected] smallpox. Benjamin Jesty was a farmer living in Yetminster 198 SCIENCE AND CULTURE, JULY-AUGUST, 2015 with a pregnant wife and three small children, and was of the disease. In an open field he took some pus from an very worried about the health of his family. However, he infected cow and using the tip of a stocking needle, he observed that the two of his dairymaids, both of whom scratched his wife’s arm and injected the pus, thus had suffered from a mild complaint of cowpox and were performing the world’s first recorded vaccination. now nursing his family members who were suffering form Incidentally, the word vaccination comes from the Latin more serious and contagious smallpox, were not affected word for cow, vacca. He then repeated the procedure on by the disease. This gave Benjamin the idea that cowpox his two sons. All of then suffered for a few days from might provide immunity to smallpox. cowpox but recovered completely after that. In 1797, the Jestys moved to Worth Matravers, where Benjamin He then decided to experiment with a dose of cowpox performed many more such vaccinations on the local on his wife and children to verify his idea. He took them people. On his gravestone are the words, ‘the first person to a nearby farm at Chetnole, where there was an outbreak (known) that introduced the Cow Pox by innoculation’. VOL. 81, NOS. 7–8 199.
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