ZHURAK HELEN 221 Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner, (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms "vaccine" and "vaccination" are derived from Variolae vaccinae(smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox.

Jenner is often called "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human". In Jenner's time, smallpox killed around 10 percent of the population, with the number as high as 20 percent in towns and cities where infection spread more easily. Dr Jenner performing his first vaccination on James Phipps, a boy of age May 1796

Edward Anthony Jenner was born on 17 May 1749 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, as the eighth of nine children. His father, the Reverend Stephen Jenner, was the vicar of Berkeley, so Jenner received a strong basic education. Edward Jenner's name as it appears on the Frieze of the LSHTM Keppel Street building

During school time, he was inoculated for smallpox, which had a lifelong effect upon his general health. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed for seven years to Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon of Chipping Sodbury, where he gained most of the experience needed to become a surgeon himself. In 1770, Jenner became apprenticed in surgery and anatomy under surgeon John Hunter and others at St George's Hospital. Returning to his native countryside by 1773, Jenner became a successful family doctor and surgeon.

Jenner's handwritten draft of the first vaccination is held at the Royal College of Surgeons in London 1825 memorial to Jenner by Robert William Sievier, Gloucester Cathedral

Edward Jenner was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1788, following his publication of a careful study of the previously misunderstood life of the nested cuckoo, a study that combined observation, experiment, and dissection.

He described how the newly-hatched cuckoo pushed its host's eggs and fledgling chicks out of the nest (contrary to existing belief that the adult cuckoo did it). Having observed this behaviour, Jenner demonstrated an anatomical adaptation for itthe baby cuckoo has a depression in its back, not present after 12 days of life, that enables it to cup eggs and other chicks.

Noting the common observation that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox, Jenner postulated that the pus in the blisters that milkmaids received from cowpox (a disease similar to smallpox, but much less virulent) protected them from smallpox. Jenner's discovery of the link between cowpox pus and smallpox in humans helped him to create the smallpox vaccine.

On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who was the son of Jenner's gardener. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom, whose hide now hangs on the wall of the St George's medical school library (now in Tooting). Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner's first paper on vaccination.

Jenner inoculated Phipps in both arms that day, subsequently producing in Phipps a fever and some uneasiness, but no full-blown infection. Later, he injected Phipps with variolous material, the routine method of immunization at that time. No disease followed. The boy was later challenged with variolous material and again showed no sign of infection.

Dr. Jenner's House, formerly known as the Edward Jenner Museum, in Berkeley, England, is housed in a grade II* listed early 18th century building called the Chantry, famous as the home of Edward Jenner FRS, physician, surgeon and pioneer of smallpox vaccination, and now used as a museum.

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