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The world in the Age of RevolutionScience and technology

Edward Jenner’s cowpox vaccination

The country doctor Edward Jenner inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with matter from cowpox pustules and then showed that the boy was immune to smallpox. The experiment marked the beginning of vaccination.

Date
14 May 1796exact date
Place
Berkeley (Gloucestershire)today: Berkeley, England, United Kingdom · Western and Central Europe
Participants
Edward Jenner
Threads
The world in the Age of Revolution

Jenner was testing the observation that milkmaids who had had cowpox did not catch smallpox. He took the matter from the hand of the milkmaid Sarah Nelmes; on 1 July 1796 he inoculated Phipps with smallpox, and the disease did not develop.

Phipps was not the first person to be inoculated with cowpox, but it was Jenner who studied the method and brought about its spread; the word “vaccine” comes from the Latin vacca, “cow”. Mass vaccination made it possible to eradicate smallpox completely in the 20th century.

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Connections

Consequences

  • Balmis Expedition30 November 1803 – 14 August 1806 · Latin Americathe Spanish expedition carried Jenner’s vaccine across the Americas and Asia

Adjacent events in the thread

Meanwhile in the world

Other regions, within a year of this event

Eastern Europe

Africa

Central and Northern Asia

East Asia

Latin America

The same period

179618th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Edward Jenner
  2. Wikipedia (English): Smallpox vaccine
  3. Wikipedia (Russian): Дженнер, Эдвард
  4. Jenner E. An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. — London, 1798.