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- Smallpox was a serious disease that caused huge pus-filled spots to appear all over the body. In the eighteenth century a great many people caught the disease and 15% of victims died. Those who lived had terrible scars left by the spots, especially on their faces.
- As a young man, Edward Jenner (1749–1823) was given smallpox on purpose. The idea was that by giving it to people when they were young, fit and healthy they would survive better than if they caught it when they were older. This was a very dangerous thing to do and many people died.
- Jenner survived but later in his life he set about trying to stop this practice, Jenner noticed that girls who looked after cows rarely caught smallpoxHe came up with a theory that if you gave people a disease caught from cows,called cowpox, they would be protected from smallpox. Many people thought he was mad and some even thought that anyone who went to him was going to die.
- He tested his theory in 1796, when a milk maid called Sarah Nelmes caught cowpox.
- He asked an 8-year-old boy, called James Phipps, to come to his house, where he squeezed pus from a cowpox spot on Sarah’s hand into a cut on James’ arm. The boy caught cowpox.
- Eight weeks after this, he squeezed pus from a smallpox spot into another cut on James’ arm. The boy did not get smallpox. This was the first vaccine (although Jenner knew nothing of microbes). The word ‘vaccine’ comes from the Latin for cow – vacca. Thanks to immunisation, smallpox no longer exists in the world (although some of the viruses are kept in laboratories for research).
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