Edward Jenner Biography

Edward Jenner was an English scientist and was the inventor of the smallpox vaccine and the pioneer of immunology. Jenner was born in Gloucestershire, England and was the son of a local vicar. He was apprenticed to a local surgeon when he was 14, and after his apprenticeship he trained in London, returning to Gloucestershire in 1772 to work as a doctor in his hometown. Jenner had a particular interest in medical theories and folklore from local remedies and people, and he had observed that milkmaids who contracted the relatively mild virus of cowpox seemed to have an immunity to the deadly smallpox virus which was infecting and killing thousands of people at the time. In 1796 Jenner inserted liquid pus from a cowpox pustule into a small incision on the arm of an eight-year-old boy, thus infecting him with cowpox. Jenner went on to prove that after being inoculated with cowpox, the boy was then immune to smallpox. He presented his theory to the Royal Society in 1797 but was told that his theory required more proof, so Jenner began a series of inoculations of other children, including his 11-month-old son. After these further tests, his work was accepted by the medical authorities and he began a program of inoculation. His work was widely ridiculed by the Church, who believed that using diseased animals to create medicine was against Church doctrine. The results of the vaccine proved stronger than Church opinion, however, and the use of the vaccine became more widespread, saving millions of lives across the world from what was previously a deadly disease. It is said that the work of Edward Jenner has saved more lives than any other man in the history of mankind.