Smallpox vaccine
Vacuna de la viruela
- Date
- 1796 · confidence high
- Place
- Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Edward Jenner
- People
- 👤 Edward Jenner1749–1823
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Inoculation with cowpox, which conferred immunity against human smallpox without the risk of variolation. The first vaccine and the first step towards the eradication of a disease (achieved in 1980).
The farmer Benjamin Jesty inoculated his family with cowpox in Dorset in 1774; Jenner was the first to test it experimentally (James Phipps, 14 May 1796) and publish it (1798).
What it led to
- State vaccination campaigns (the Balmis Expedition, 1803; the British Act of 1853)
- Anti-vaccination movements and debate over compulsion
- The concept of immunisation and Pasteur's vaccines
- Public health as a responsibility of the state
Built on
- African variolation (Onesimus's testimony)before 1706
- Variolation (smallpox inoculation)1721
- Variolation (China, Ottoman Empire; Lady Montagu, 1721)
- Benjamin Jesty's observations (1774)
Made possible
- Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition (Balmis)1803-1806
- Oswaldo Cruz's sanitation campaign in Rio1903-1907
- Last natural smallpox case (Merca, 1977)26 de octubre de 1977
- Pasteur's vaccines (rabies, anthrax)
- Immunology
- Eradication of smallpox