Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner (1749–1823) was an English physician who developed and promoted vaccination against smallpox using material from cowpox lesions. His work helped establish vaccination as a means of preventing infectious disease.

Smallpox vaccine: A vaccine that protects against smallpox, first developed through inoculation with cowpox and later produced with vaccinia virus. Jenner’s 1796 experiment used cowpox material to prevent smallpox.
James Phipps: An eight-year-old boy whom Edward Jenner inoculated with cowpox in 1796 and later challenged with smallpox material. Phipps was the first subject in Jenner’s landmark cowpox vaccination experiment.
Vaccination: The administration of a vaccine to stimulate protective immunity against a disease. The word and practice grew from Jenner’s use of cowpox, named variolae vaccinae.
John Hunter: A Scottish surgeon and anatomist who taught Edward Jenner and encouraged careful observation and experiment. Hunter was Jenner’s mentor during his medical training in London.
Cowpox virus: A poxvirus that causes cowpox in cattle and can infect humans, though it is not the virus used in modern smallpox vaccines. The historical identity of the virus in Jenner’s original vaccine material remains uncertain.
Cowpox: A usually mild viral disease of cattle that can infect humans and provide immunity against smallpox. Cowpox supplied the material Jenner used in his vaccination experiment.
Sarah Nelmes: A milkmaid whose cowpox infection supplied the material Jenner used to inoculate James Phipps. Jenner obtained the cowpox material for Phipps’s inoculation from Nelmes’s lesion.
Smallpox eradication: The worldwide elimination of naturally occurring smallpox, certified by the World Health Organization in 1980. The vaccination tradition Jenner helped launch ultimately enabled smallpox to become the first human disease eradicated worldwide.
Royal Society: A British learned society that promotes scientific research and publishes scholarly work. The Royal Society rejected Jenner’s early cowpox findings as insufficiently supported before he published them independently.
Horsepox: A poxvirus that causes disease in horses and is genetically related to viruses used in smallpox vaccines. Horsepox has been proposed as a possible source or relative of early vaccine viruses.

Linked from 8 pages