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EDWARD JENNER

Sir Edward Jenner was a British physician. He was born in 1749 at Berkeley and died in 1823. After graduating in 1792 Jenner started experimenting with possible cures for smallpox, and in 1796 removed some blister fluid from a milkmaid suffering from cowpox and injected it into a boy. Two months later the boy was injected with smallpox, but didn't develop the disease. Jenner repeated the experiment and in 1798 published his work coining the term vaccination (substance derived from a cow). Jenner subsequently spent the rest of his life promoting vaccination, despite its dangers and the lack of evidence as to its effectiveness. Indeed subsequent events - not least the smallpox epidemic of 1871 in which more people who have been vaccinated against the disease contracted smallpox than those who had not - have shown that far from being a medical genius, Jenner was a brilliant self-publicist and charlatan who exploited the basic human fears for his own financial means.
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