The father of immunology

photo credit

Because survivors of smallpox were believed resistant to later exposures to the disease, inoculations of smallpox were a standard practice among some early societies. In the early 1700s subcutaneous inoculation of the smallpox virus became increasingly popular in Europe, but carried serious risks and was poorly understood. By the late 1700s several individuals noticed that milkmaids exposed to cowpox were also resistant to smallpox exposure. Edward Jenner, who was himself inoculated at an early age, was the first to scientifically investigate the association between cowpox exposure and smallpox resistance. In his paper "An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccine" he performed several case studies in which individuals previously infected with cowpox were exposed to subcutaneous inoculations of smallpox and did not contract the disease. He hypothesized that cowpox could be transferred from human to human and therefore subsequently exposed an 8 year old boy to cowpox from the sores of a milkmaid with the disease. After the boy recovered, Jenner exposed him to the smallpox virus and noted that the boy was immune to the disease. Jenner decided to call this procedure vaccination. While his work was very controversial, it eventually led to the establishment of programs dedicated to the eradication of a disease that had devastated mankind for centuries.

• The original paper. Choose the second pdf.

Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination