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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 spot, especially on their faces.
As a young man, Edward Jenner (1789-1823) 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 smallpox. He came up with the theory that if you gave people cowpox, they would be protected from smallpox.
He tested his theory in 1796, when a milk maid called Sarah Nelmes caught cowpox. He asked an 8 year old boy, called James Philips, to come to his house, where he squeezed pus from a cowpox spot into a cut on James' arm and the boy caught cowpox.
8 weeks later, he squeezed pus from a smallpox spot into another spot on James' arm and he did not get smallpox.
This was the first vaccine (although Jenner knew nothing of microbes). The word 'vaccine' comes from the Latin word cow-vacca. Thanks to immunisation, smallpox no longer exists in the world, although scientists keep some of the viruses in laboratories for research

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