Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner (1749-1823), British physician, who discovered the vaccine that is used against smallpox and laid the groundwork for the science of immunology.

Born on May 17, 1749, in Berkeley, a rural vicarage in Gloucestershire, England, Jenner became a keen observer of nature at an early age. After nine years as a surgeon's apprentice, he went to London to study anatomy and surgery under the prominent surgeon John Hunter, then returned to Berkeley to start a country practice that lasted the rest of his life.

Smallpox, a major cause of death in the 18th century, was treated in Jenner's time by the often-fatal procedure of inoculating healthy persons with pustule substances from those who had mild cases of the disease. Jenner observed, among his patients, that those who had been exposed to the much milder disease cowpox were completely resistant to these inoculations. In 1796 he inoculated an eight-year-old boy with cowpox virus; six weeks after the boy's reaction Jenner reinoculated him with smallpox virus, finding the result negative. By 1798, having added similarly successful cases, Jenner wrote An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Known by the Name of Cow Pox, a tract in which he also introduced the term virus.

Jenner encountered some public resistance and professional chicanery in publicizing his findings, and he experienced difficulties in obtaining and preserving cowpox vaccine. Nevertheless his procedure was soon accepted, and mortality due to smallpox plunged. The procedure quickly spread through Europe and to North America. Three-quarters of a century later, the French chemist Louis Pasteur, drawing on Jenner's work, set the course for the science of immunology and the discovery of modern preventive vaccines. Jenner died in Berkeley on January 26, 1823.