Edward Jenner: The Pioneer of the Smallpox Vaccination | Heroes of Progress | Ep. 3

For centuries, smallpox was one of humanity's oldest and most devastating illnesses. The virus, which can be traced back to Pharaonic Egypt, is thought to have killed between 300 and 500 million people in the 20th century alone. The speckled monster, as it was known in 18th century England, was highly contagious and left the victim's body covered with abscesses. If the infection was strong enough, the immune system of the patient would fail and death would soon follow. Enter Edward Jenner. Born in Gloucestershire in 1749, Jenner worked at St. George's Hospital in London. After studying blood for several years, in May 1796, Jenner turned his attention to smallpox. At the time, it was believed that dairy maids were immune to smallpox because they had previously contracted cowpox, a similar but milder disease. To test this theory, Jenner extracted a sample of cowpox from a young dairy maid infected with the disease and injected it into an eight-year-old boy. Two months later, Jenner inoculated the boy with smallpox, and no disease developed. Jenner named the procedure vaccination, after the Latin word for cow, which is vacca. The discovery quickly spread throughout Europe, and Napoleon, who insisted on vaccinating all his troops, awarded Jenner a medal, and even released two captured English prisoners at Jenner's request. Jenner never attempted to enrich himself through his discovery, and would vaccinate the poor for free. The vaccine laid the foundation for countless other discoveries that helped with humanity's fight against disease. And in 1979, the World Health Organization officially declared smallpox eradicated. For revolutionizing immunology and saving untold millions of lives, Edward Jenner is rightly a Hero of Progress.