Edward Jenner, a
practitioner in Gloucestershire, and the pupil to whom John Hunter gave
the famous advice: "Don't think, try!" had noticed that milkmaids
who had been infected with cowpox from the udder of the cow were
insusceptible to smallpox. I show you here the hand of Sarah Nelmes with
cowpox, 1796. A vague notion had prevailed among the dairies from time
immemorial that this disease was a preventive of the smallpox. Jenner
put the matter to the test of experiment. Let me quote here his own
words: "The first experiment was made upon a lad of the name of Phipps,
in whose arm a little vaccine virus was inserted, taken from the hand
of a young woman who had been accidentally infected by a cow.
Notwithstanding the resemblance which the pustule, thus excited on
the boy's arm, bore to variolous inoculation, yet as the indisposition
attending it was barely perceptible, I could scarcely persuade myself
the patient was secure from the Small Pox. However, on his being
inoculated some months afterwards, it proved that he was secure."(8)
The results of his experiments were published in a famous small quarto
volume in 1798.(*) From this date, smallpox has been under control.
Thanks to Jenner, not a single person in this audience is pockmarked!
A hundred and twenty-five years ago, the faces of more than half of you
would have been scarred.
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