Edward Jenner and the Smallpox Vaccine
In 1754, an English boy heard a dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox.” This was not an uncommon belief. The boy was apprenticed to a country doctor. He ultimately coined the term “vaccination” and earned the lion’s share of the credit for the smallpox vaccine. That boy was Edward Jenner (1749-1823) and he is often credited with saving more lives than any other human in history.
On May 8, 1980, the World Health Assembly declared the world free of smallpox: “The world and all its people have won freedom from smallpox, which was the most devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest times, leaving death, blindness and disfigurement in its wake.”
How bad was it? In 1778, Voltaire noted that about 60% of people in Paris contracted smallpox and that 20% died. In 1721, about half of Boston contracted smallpox. Cotton Mather reported that, uninoculated, the mortality rate was 14% and only 2% among the inoculated.
In 1798, Jenner published “An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae.” Vacca is Latin for cow – and cowpox is vaccinia. “Variolation” was the precursor to vaccination. It involved lancing a sick person’s ripe blister and putting that under the skin of a non-infected person. It was a risky procedure since it could also transmit disease, but the likelihood of death by smallpox dropped precipitously. Jenner decided to call this new procedure vaccination.
Jenner took pus from cowpox blisters on Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who contracted the disease from Blossom, a cow whose hide is still publicly displayed at St. George's Medical School library.
Did Jenner invent the smallpox vaccine? Inoculation (variolation) appears to have been practiced in Africa, India and Asia long before it was introduced to Europe. In 1670, Circassian traders introduced variolation to the Ottoman Empire – and Voltaire noted they had been doing this for longer than anyone could remember. Sometimes, however, what matters most is not who invents a thing, but who popularizes it – and convincing people to put diseased matter into their bodies was no easy sell. Jenner wasn’t out for glory. At the time, he received as much derision as respect for his work.
For saving the world from smallpox, many people deserve credit – from the milkmaids and their homespun wisdom to the first vaccine recipients and the Princess of Wales who had her two daughters vaccinated in 1722, a turning point in the popularity of the procedure. Certainly, the doctors and scientists who develop vaccines are doing heroic work, but true success requires far more than a good idea; it takes compelling leadership and society’s acceptance.
Words by Daniel Kany
