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Article by, Owen Gower is Museum Manager at Dr Jenner’s House, the former home of vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner. He regularly speaks and participates in interviews about Edward Jenner, the history of smallpox and the development of vaccination.
The extraordinary medical legacy of Edward Jenner, the father of modern vaccination, the country doctor who pioneered vaccination.
The legend usually repeated is that Jenner, a family doctor from Gloucestershire, England, had observed that milkmaids working in the countryside around his hometown of Berkeley had remarkably clear complexions and were never afflicted by the scars of the feared disease smallpox.
When he asked about this, he was told that they had all contracted cowpox in the course of their work and it was this that protected them from smallpox.
Jenner decided to try and experiment, and when Sarah Nelmes consulted him about the blisters she had acquired after milking a cow named Blossom, the doctor acted quickly.
Using pus from Nelmes’s lesions, he deliberately infected James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener, first with cowpox and, later, with smallpox.
To everyone’s relief, James did not contract smallpox. Jenner’s theory had been correct, and vaccination was born.
Edward Jenner wanted vaccination to be free at the point of delivery … available to everyone, no matter who they were or where they were from.
However, what is often forgotten is the rigorous scientific method behind Jenner’s experiment.
For some years prior to this first vaccination in 1796 he had been gathering evidence supporting the theory that those who had once contracted cowpox were immune from smallpox.
But his evidence was predominantly based on hearsay and required scrutiny in the form of clinical trials.
This is how, on 14 May 1796, he came to take fluid from a cowpox blister on Nelmes’s hand and scratch it onto the skin of James Phipps, who had previously had neither cowpox nor smallpox.
As expected, Phipps contracted cowpox and, once his fever subsided, Jenner then attempted to inoculate him using live smallpox.
This technique, also known as variolation, involved deliberately infecting a patient with a mild dose of smallpox in the expectation that it would provide protection from a more severe infection.
It had long been practiced in China, India, the Ottoman Empire, parts of Africa, and had gained popularity in Western medicine after 1721, when it was championed by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
Lady Mary had arranged for her children to be variolated after witnessing the practice in Turkey, and soon persuaded Caroline, Princess of Wales, to have her own children inoculated.
Jenner once wrote, “On average I am at least six hours daily with my pen in my hand bending over writing paper till I am grown as crocked as a cow’s horn and tawny as whey butter.”
Through modern eyes we might be taken aback by the ethical implications of deliberately infecting a child with smallpox; however, at the time the technique was considered to be the “gold standard” for artificially inducing immunity.
Does this sound familiar folks?
Infection with the mild disease cowpox was perhaps more controversial, but Jenner’s theory looked to be correct when, despite exposure to the deadly virus, Phipps did not contract smallpox.
Some months later, Jenner attempted to inoculate Phipps with smallpox again, but to no effect, and then tried the same experiment on numerous others.
Jenner’s trials were controlled, repeatable and, crucially, widely disseminated through his 1798 publication ‘An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ’.
Having shown that cowpox could protect against smallpox, Jenner devoted the rest of his life to telling the world about vaccination and how to perform it safely and effectively.
In the garden of his house in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Jenner turned a rustic, thatched summerhouse into the world’s first free vaccination clinic.
There he ensured that this life-saving medical intervention was available on the basis of need, rather than ability to pay.
Many consider the Temple of Vaccinia, the grand name given by Jenner to this building, to be a symbol not just of hope in the fight against disease but of the principles and values of a later free public health service: the National Health Service.
John Baron, Edward Jenner’s biographer, wrote that “the discovery of vaccination, was ushered into the world with singular modesty and humility”. And so it was that Jenner, without fanfare or ceremony, made his research on vaccination against smallpox freely available to the world.
Jenner did not seek to profit from his work and discouraged others from doing the same.
If anything, Jenner’s own income and medical practice suffered from the long hours he invested corresponding with those who were interested in adopting vaccination.
At the heart of Jenner’s commitment to free access for all was his practice of opening his garden once a week so that the poor of the local area could be vaccinated.
Jenner’s tireless work to share news of vaccination was grounded in his own deep-seated compassion and desire to bring about a world free of smallpox.
The fact that Jenner rarely travelled, preferring home comforts to a life on the road performing mass vaccinations, does not contradict these values. Jenner was, first and foremost, a community doctor.
In 1804 his friend W J Joyce observed, “The Doctor very well understands the art of dealing with their prejudices and it gave me great pleasure to observe the gentle and effectual manner with which he endeavored to soothe their mind.”
Jenner knew his patients and understood that they might have concerns about this new practice. That they consented to receive vaccination illustrates their level of trust in him.
Jenner primarily vaccinated within his normal practice area and taught others how to do the same in their own communities.
This method of working perpetuated even to the final days of the World Health Organization Smallpox Eradication Program of 1966–80, when an international team of medics supported local healthcare workers to ensure vaccination was accepted in areas where people remained unprotected.
Edward Jenner wanted vaccination to be free at the point of delivery, carefully explained by trusted and trained local healthcare workers, and available to everyone, no matter who they were or where they were from.
He considered himself the “Vaccine Clerk to the World” and was not interested in geopolitical divides, for “the Sciences are never at War” and he knew that it would require an international effort to realize his dream of the global eradication of smallpox.
Jenner’s willingness to teach anyone to vaccinate contributed to the prompt uptake of this new practice throughout the world and was rewarded with international recognition and respect.
In 1807, with Britain and France locked in conflict, Jenner petitioned Napoleon for the release of two friends who were being held as prisoners of war.
Napoleon was told to dismiss the request until his wife Joséphine insisted he look again at who it was from. “What that man asks is not to be refused” came the now famous reply from Napoleon.
How about another vaccine story? I found another great article by Lily Rothman on the Time website. JULY 6, 2015
It deals with the vaccine developed to address the disease of rabies.
Rabies is among the most terrifying viruses to get. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “once clinical signs of rabies appear, the disease is nearly always fatal.”
Luckily for us—and our pets—Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine that can stop things from getting to that point.
The first time the vaccine was ever administered to a human being–on this day in 1885–was by Pasteur himself.
Knowing that the disease was otherwise fatal, both doctor and patient (or, rather, patient’s mother) were willing to risk whatever harm might come from the injection, which had only been tested on dogs.
As TIME recounted all the way back in in 1939:
One hot July morning in 1885, feverish little Joseph Meister was dragged by his frantic mother through the streets of Paris in search of an unknown scientist who, according to rumors, could prevent rabies.
The nine-year-old Joseph had been bitten in 14 places by a huge, mad dog and in a desperate attempt to cheat death, his mother had fled from their hometown in Alsace to Paris.
Early in the afternoon Mrs. Meister met a young physician in a hospital. “You mean Pasteur,” he said. “I’ll take you there.”
Bacteriologist Louis Pasteur, who kept kennels of mad dogs in a crowded little laboratory and was hounded by medical criticism, had never tried his rabies vaccine on a human being before.
But moved by the tears of Mrs. Meister, he finally took the boy to the Hotel-Dieu, had him injected with material from the spinal cord of a rabbit that had died from rabies.
For three weeks Pasteur watched anxiously at the boy’s bedside. To his overwhelming joy, the boy recovered.
By that fall, when his nation’s Academy of Sciences acknowledged the success, “hundreds of persons who had been bitten by mad dogs rushed to his laboratory.”
As for the little boy, Joseph Meister? He ended up working as a janitor at the Pasteur Institute. There, TIME reported in 1939, that Meister entertained visitors with tales of his time as the pioneering doctor’s patient: “I shall see always Pasteur’s good face focused on me,” he told them.
How about one more folks?
Christopher Klein, History.com
Let’s talk about Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine.
In the early 20th century, polio was one of the most feared diseases in America.
While most scientists believed that effective vaccines could only be developed with live viruses, Jonas Salk developed a “killed-virus” vaccine by growing samples of the virus and then deactivating them by adding formaldehyde so that they could no longer reproduce.
By injecting the benign strains into the bloodstream, the vaccine tricked the immune system into manufacturing protective antibodies without the need to introduce a weakened form of the virus into healthy patients.
Many researchers such as Polish-born virologist Albert Sabin, who was developing an oral “live-virus” polio vaccine, called Salk’s approach dangerous.
Sabin even belittled Salk as “a mere kitchen chemist.”
After successfully inoculating thousands of monkeys, Salk began the risky step of testing the vaccine on humans in 1952.
In addition to administering the vaccine to children at two Pittsburgh-area institutions, Salk injected himself, his wife and his three sons in his kitchen after boiling the needles and syringes on his stovetop.
Salk announced the success of the initial human tests to a national radio audience on March 26, 1953.
Now folks, do you see a central theme here?
Smallpox, Rabies, Polio; all deadly diseases with no cure at the time.
Jenner, Pasteur, and Salk all saw that something needed to be done.
In every case, they took tremendous risks. Had their patients died as a result of their experiments, they would have been charged with murder.
Think about that.
Jenner injected his gardener’s 8 year old son with an experimental vaccine. Likewise, Louis Pasteur risked his entire reputation and career to save the life of a nine year old boy infected with Rabies.
Finally, what greater risk can one take than to try your experiment on yourself and your own family as Jonas Salk did with his polio vaccine?
Now folks, I am not telling you to run out and get the vaccine if you haven’t already done so.
What I am trying to do, is what I do every week with my shows.
I am trying to educate. I am tired of the national news pushing fear and lies.
I want people to know as much information as possible when it comes to making a decision as important as one’s health.
Vaccinate, don’t vaccinate, that is entirely up to you.
Is there a risk? You bet. As you can see from today’s show, there is always a risk. All I ask is that you do your research before you make any decisions.
As I have always said, “I don’t have a problem with people that don’t know, but I have a huge problem with those who don’t want to know.
Today, as we face a new disease in the form of Covid-19, more than 140 leaders around the world have called for a people’s patent-free vaccine.
Discussions focus on equitable access, treatment focused on need, rather than ability to pay, and a method of distribution that is both rapid and fair.
And if all that sounds familiar, it should. These ideas are not new: they are Edward Jenner’s founding principles of vaccination all the way back in 1798.