"[On May 14, 1796], Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox inoculation, thereby giving birth to the science of immunology.

Jenner had observed that milkmaids, who often contracted cowpox, seemed immune to its much deadlier cousin, smallpox.

So he infected James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener, with cowpox using pus gathered from the blisters of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught the infection from a cow called Blossom.

Jenner then exposed the boy to smallpox and discovered that he did not contract the disease.

Although Jenner was the first to apply scientific principles to the subject, the idea of inoculation was nothing new. In 1774, Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty had infected his wife and family with cowpox to protect them during a smallpox epidemic.

But it is Jenner who is called “the father of immunology” and is often credited with saving more lives through his work than any other human in history. In Jenner’s time, the disease killed around 10 per cent of the population, rising to 20 per cent in towns and cities where infection spread more easily.

Before Jenner, one attempt to beat the disease had been “variolation”, taken from the scientific name of the smallpox virus, variola. It involved deliberately infecting someone in controlled circumstances to create immunity. The idea had been brought to Britain from Turkey in 1721 by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

It was a little like Russian roulette, though, since deaths from variolation were also common. Jenner himself had been variolated at school – starved, purged, bled and locked in a stable with other infected boys until the disease had run its course." ~ Sponsored by Royal London, telegraph.co.uk/only-in-britain/edward-jenner-discovers-the-smallpox-vaccine/

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"High hooves for Blossom"
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