14th May 1796: Edward Jenner vaccinates against smallpox

Hello, and welcome to HistoryPod. On 14 May 1796, English physician and scientist Edward Jenner purposefully infected eight-year-old James Phipps with cowpox. Rather than committing an act of gross medical negligence, Jenner was actually scientifically testing and proving that infection with the mild disease of cowpox gave immunity to smallpox. By modern estimates, smallpox was killing up to 400,000 people a year across Europe by the end of the 18th century. It is also known to have devastated the leaders of the royal families of Austria, Spain, Russia, Sweden, and France. Attempts to reduce the impact of the disease were already well established. The process of smallpox inoculation, also known as variolation, involved purposefully infecting a person with the smallpox disease using fluid from pustules on an already affected patient. Although this process was less risky than contracting the disease naturally, it was still a dangerous process. Therefore, the ability to prevent smallpox by using a safer alternative was highly desirable. Edward Jenner's process was a medical revolution. Although contrary to popular belief, he was not the first person to link the infection with cowpox to immunity to smallpox. For example, Dr John Fusti had presented a paper called Cowpox and its Ability to Prevent Smallpox to the Medical Society of London in 1765, an astounding 31 years before Jenner's experiment. However, Fusti never published his paper and he did not carry out any experiments to scientifically prove the connection. Therefore, Jenner, who conducted, recorded, and published a methodical scientific process, is credited with the discovery of vaccination.