Summary page: Greatest medical triumph before 1850. 1) Epidemics of smallpox regularly broke out in Britain. Disfiguring disease, if victim survived would probably become social outcast. 2) In eighteenth century inoculation introduced in Britain from Asia. Brought to Britain by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, husband ambassador to Turkey. 3) Innoculation was a procedure where a milder form of the disease was injected into the patients body, therefore producing anti-bodies and surviving. As a result will be immune from smallpox in the future. 4) Risk of inoculation sometimes the disease would get worse and cause the patient to die. 5) Edward Jenner was a doctor in Gloucester. When he tried to inoculate the local community many refused the procedure. Jenner was told that local dairy maids who had caught cowpox were less likely to catch smallpox. 6) Jenner tested this theory, when Sarah Nelmes was infected with cowpox he injected some of the matter from one of her cowpox sores into a local boy James Phipps. James was later innoculated with smallpox matter. No disease followed. 7) To check that this was not a coincidence - Jenner tried the experiment with 23 different cases , they all showed that cowpox protected humans from smallpox. 8) Jenner wrote up his findings, his book was widely read and he was given a grant of £30,000 to open a vaccination clinic in London. 9) Method spread throughout world- Napoleon had all his soldiers vaccinated.
Importance of discovery - Jenner was first immuniser. Method later used by Pasteur and Koch.
