Edward Jenner, an English country doctor is usually credited with introducing the idea of vaccination because of his landmark publication in 1798 in which he described inoculating 23 people with pus from smallpox pustules. Normally they would have been expected to come down with the disease. But none did! Why? Because Jenner had previously exposed them to a disease that was well-known among milkmaids, known as cowpox. Somehow this exposure conferred immunity to the far more serious smallpox.
Actually, Jenner did not come up with the idea of vaccination. That honor should really go to some unidentified Turkish whiz in the 16th century. But if we must connect a name with the discovery, how about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of Britain's ambassador to Turkey in the 16th century. It was the gentle lady’s habit to put on disguises and roam the streets of Constantinople. During one of these incognito capers she came upon an old woman who had a reputation for protecting children against smallpox. Her technique must have seemed absurd. She would scratch a vein in a child’s arm and introduce some liquid from a smallpox postule. The story that Lady Montagu heard was that these children might get mildly ill, but never got smallpox!
This apparently bizarre approach did seem to make sense. It was well known at the time that someone who survived smallpox, would never get the disease again. So why not give the disease to the young and healthy who had the best chance of recovery? Lady Montagu, upon her return to England, suggested that the practice of inoculating children in this fashion should be introduced but was roundly condemned for proposing such a preposterous idea. How dare anyone suggest that the youth of the nation should be purposely made ill? The Church also put in its two bits. God’s laws must not be interfered with! Seemingly only a layman, Robert Sutton, showed any real vision, perhaps prompted by the chance to cash in on the discovery. He opened a vaccination center in Essex and inoculated more than 17,000 people with smallpox extract only five of whom died.
In 1774, farmer Benjamin Jesty followed in Sutton’s footsteps. He had noted that milkmaids sometimes came down with a disease that resulted in pustules on their body. These looked to him to be very similar to smallpox pustules, and using a darning needle, he inoculated his wife and two sons with pus he had withdrawn from a victim. Then sometime later, he exposed them to smallpox and found they were unaffected. Edward Jenner heard about this story and it sparked his interest because he himself had been inoculated with smallpox when he was a boy. Now, for the next twenty years Jenner observed milkmaids who had come down with cowpox and found that they never contracted smallpox. So finally in 1776 he inoculated eight year old James Phipps with cowpox and then exposed him to smallpox. The boy did not get the disease. This prompted further trials and resulted in the publication of Jenner’s paper in 1798. By 1801 about 100,000 people in Britain had been vaccinated. Jenner was knighted and got a prize of ten thousand pounds. The term vaccination? Of course it comes from the Latin word for cow! Now you know why.
