🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Edward Jenner

Science · Maths, astronomy, medicine & more

Edward Jenner

1749–1823 · English

Medicine — immunology (vaccination)

Edward Jenner was a Gloucestershire country doctor who pioneered vaccination against smallpox. In 1796 he inoculated the boy James Phipps with material from a cowpox sore and then showed he was protected against smallpox. His work, published in 1798, spread vaccination worldwide and led ultimately to the eradication of smallpox, declared by the WHO in 1980.

How to spot them

  • ▸Smallpox vaccine; cowpox; James Phipps; milkmaid Sarah Nelmes
  • ▸Berkeley, Gloucestershire; the 'Temple of Vaccinia' hut in his garden
  • ▸The cow Blossom, whose hide hangs at St George's, University of London
  • ▸Pupil of John Hunter; also studied the nesting habits of the cuckoo
  • ▸'Vaccine' from Latin vacca, cow

Key discoveries & works

First vaccination against smallpox, using cowpox (1796)

On 14 May he inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with cowpox from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes

An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (1798)

His self-published account of cowpox as a protection against smallpox

Observations on the Natural History of the Cuckoo (1788)

Showed the cuckoo chick ejects its foster-parents' eggs and young; led to his election as FRS (1789)

The Temple of Vaccinia (c. 1800s)

Rustic hut in his garden at Berkeley where he vaccinated the poor free of charge

Key ideas

  • Deliberate infection with a mild, related disease (cowpox) protects against a deadly one (smallpox)
  • Vaccination replaced the riskier older practice of variolation (inoculation with smallpox matter)
  • Louis Pasteur later extended the words 'vaccine' and 'vaccination' to all such preventive inoculations in Jenner's honour

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, in 1749; his house there is now Dr Jenner's House museum
  • •Trained in London under the surgeon John Hunter, who wrote to him: 'why think? why not try the experiment?'
  • •Tested the country belief that milkmaids who caught cowpox did not get smallpox
  • •The cow that infected Sarah Nelmes was called Blossom
  • •Parliament granted him £10,000 in 1802 and a further £20,000 in 1807
  • •The WHO declared smallpox eradicated in 1980

Drill it — 8 cards

1 / 8new card

Sources