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Jenner's Cowpox Vaccine

in The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the 'Opening' of Japan

This chapter considers the social, political, and institutional frameworks within which Edward Jenner conceived and presented his hypothesis that cowpox virus, Variolae vaccinae, could be used to ... More

This chapter considers the social, political, and institutional frameworks within which Edward Jenner conceived and presented his hypothesis that cowpox virus, Variolae vaccinae, could be used to prevent smallpox. Since Variolae vaccinae can be transmitted successfully from person to person without loss of its essential properties, this would mean that protection against smallpox could be transmitted using human beings as the agents of transmission. Jenner tested whether vaccination could prevent smallpox in the recipient.Less

The Great Benefactor

in The Vaccination Controversy: The Rise, Reign and Fall of Compulsory Vaccination for Smallpox

This chapter focuses on Edward Jenner, who studied the use of cowpox to prevent smallpox. In May 1796 Sarah Nelmes, the daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Berkeley, developed cowpox on her ... More

This chapter focuses on Edward Jenner, who studied the use of cowpox to prevent smallpox. In May 1796 Sarah Nelmes, the daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Berkeley, developed cowpox on her hands after milking a cow suffering from the disease. Jenner took matter from one of the pustules with his lancet and transferred it to the arm of an eight-year-old boy called James Phipps, who in due course developed cowpox. Several weeks later he was inoculated with smallpox and failed to respond with even a modified form of the disease: the first successful example of what came to be called ‘vaccination’. The controversy generated by Jenner's findings is discussed.Less

Jenner’s Debt to Sutton

Gavin Weightman

in The Great Inoculator: The Untold Story of Daniel Sutton and his Medical Revolution

This chapter assesses whether Edward Jenner would have discovered the protective power of cowpox even if there had been no inoculation before vaccination. In his account of how he made his discovery, ... More

This chapter assesses whether Edward Jenner would have discovered the protective power of cowpox even if there had been no inoculation before vaccination. In his account of how he made his discovery, Jenner attributes it directly to his experiences as an inoculator. All the histories Jenner presented to support his case for vaccine inoculation could not have been performed without Suttonian inoculation. And when Jenner came to attempt his first practical experiment with the vaccine, he was already an experienced Suttonian inoculator. He believed the key to Sutton's success was the manner of inserting the infective matter with the lancet barely breaking the skin or drawing blood. That is how he chose to perform his first vaccination.Less

The Concept of Host and Immunity

Mervyn Susser and Zena Stein

in Eras in Epidemiology: The Evolution of Ideas

This chapter discusses the historical development of the concept of host and immunity. Smallpox is a disease that, until the 20h century, had long been among the greatest of human plagues. In the ... More

This chapter discusses the historical development of the concept of host and immunity. Smallpox is a disease that, until the 20h century, had long been among the greatest of human plagues. In the last quarter of the 18th century, Edward Jenner set public health on the path to its eventual virtual eradication in the late 20th century. Louis Pasteur, in his second major phase of thought and research, carried forward, consolidated, and generalized the themes of immunity and host resistance to specific organisms. His work was the necessary prelude to the general application of immunization for many diseases in domesticated animals and in human beings.Less

Cowmania!

Gavin Weightman

in The Great Inoculator: The Untold Story of Daniel Sutton and his Medical Revolution

This chapter discusses how vaccination was to conquer the world in a very short space of time, despite the fact that the research on which it was based was very limited and, in some vital respects, ... More

This chapter discusses how vaccination was to conquer the world in a very short space of time, despite the fact that the research on which it was based was very limited and, in some vital respects, faulty. Edward Jenner was ingenious and imaginative but he was not meticulous. This very soon became apparent as experiments were made with the vaccine. There was one great problem when experiments with the effectiveness of cowpox vaccine were begun in earnest in many parts of the world: where to get the necessary infective matter. Ultimately, 'Cowmania' was a wild, worldwide clamour for a medical innovation which had not been subject to more than cursory, and not always satisfactory, scrutiny. Suttonian inoculation, on the other hand, had stood the test of time and there were those who doubted if vaccination offered a great improvement. One, not surprisingly, was Daniel Sutton himself.Less

The Mystery of Immunity

Gavin Weightman

in The Great Inoculator: The Untold Story of Daniel Sutton and his Medical Revolution

This chapter assesses the mystery of immunity. Today, Edward Jenner is often referred to as the 'father of immunology'. But really, Jenner had no more claim to that title than Lady Mary Wortley ... More

This chapter assesses the mystery of immunity. Today, Edward Jenner is often referred to as the 'father of immunology'. But really, Jenner had no more claim to that title than Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, or the Greek women inoculating in Constantinople, or Daniel Sutton. None of them knew anything of the micro-organisms that Louis Pasteur and his contemporaries called 'germs'. It took well over a century after the deaths of Sutton and Jenner for an accumulation of scientific investigation to gain some understanding of what had been going on medically when the inoculators and vaccinators sought to bring smallpox under control. And it was a long time after the identification of 'germs', and the detective work that isolated the elements in them that caused specific infections, that it was understood that inoculation and vaccination worked because they triggered an immune response in the patient.Less

Ambivalent Cosmopolites

Amanda B. Moniz

in From Empire to Humanity: The American Revolution and the Origins of Humanitarianism

Long-standing doubts about universal benevolence came to the fore as the French Revolutionary Wars and the Haitian Revolution destabilized the Atlantic world. Some activists had always contested the ... More

Long-standing doubts about universal benevolence came to the fore as the French Revolutionary Wars and the Haitian Revolution destabilized the Atlantic world. Some activists had always contested the new trend by pursuing national and particularistic approaches. Now, many more criticized it and pressed for the primacy of national or local moral obligation. Yet in spite of the waning of cosmopolitan ideals, philanthropists across causes continued working with faraway colleagues. Most important, British, American, and European activists jointly undertook a campaign to eradicate smallpox. Vaccination activists built on the structures of the humane society cause but adapted the older movement’s person-by-drowning person approach to a global scale. With this undertaking, activists from the last Atlantic generation and their protégés together achieved a worldwide reach in beneficence. Paradoxically, they celebrated this accomplishment and the ongoing cooperation in other causes in nationalist tones.Less

Sutton and Jenner: The Legacy

Gavin Weightman

in The Great Inoculator: The Untold Story of Daniel Sutton and his Medical Revolution

This chapter looks at how Daniel Sutton died forgotten at the age of eighty-three on February 3, 1819. There was no institution to carry Sutton's name into the era of vaccination; his family was ... More

This chapter looks at how Daniel Sutton died forgotten at the age of eighty-three on February 3, 1819. There was no institution to carry Sutton's name into the era of vaccination; his family was scattered and none had any connection with medicine. There is not a single Sutton memorial in London or anywhere in the country, or, as far as is known, in the rest of the world. His importance in the defeat of smallpox would not be acknowledged even now if it were not for the interest historians have taken in eighteenth-century medicine in recent years. There was certainly contemporary support for the view that Suttonian inoculation had had a hugely beneficial effect on health in the eighteenth century. While vaccination was hailed as much safer and more successful than Suttonian inoculation, smallpox continued to attack communities throughout the nineteenth century and Edward Jenner's reputation waxed and waned.Less

Scabrous Matters: Spurious Vaccinations in the Confederacy

Robert D. Hicks (ed.)

in War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era

As smallpox spread through the Confederacy, its physicians tried to innoculate the population against the dreaded disease. They created vaccine matter, which are human-made artifacts, by infecting ... More

As smallpox spread through the Confederacy, its physicians tried to innoculate the population against the dreaded disease. They created vaccine matter, which are human-made artifacts, by infecting civilians, and they then tried to treat soldiers, who did not always follow correct medical procedures.Less

The Battle for Vaccination

Gavin Weightman

in The Great Inoculator: The Untold Story of Daniel Sutton and his Medical Revolution

This chapter examines how the worldwide excitement for Edward Jenner's vaccine in the first flush of Cowmania promised a new era in which parents would clamour to have their children protected by ... More

This chapter examines how the worldwide excitement for Edward Jenner's vaccine in the first flush of Cowmania promised a new era in which parents would clamour to have their children protected by this new and safe form of inoculation. This would have realised the dream of John Haygarth, who had imagined a national scheme and dismissed it on the grounds that it was unenforceable. But vaccination was not greeted with the enthusiasm that might have been anticipated. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, vaccination was favoured over inoculation by Parliament and by a majority of the medical profession, but not by the public. Faced with the threat of an outbreak of smallpox, the offer of free vaccination was often turned down in favour of tried and trusted inoculation in what was now the 'old method'. Authorities realised that, to be effective, a general inoculation had to offer the public a choice of Sutton or Jenner.Less

Confronting Smallpox

in The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the 'Opening' of Japan

Variola major, the virus that causes smallpox, circulates continuously from one susceptible human to another. As the variola virus establishes its migratory sphere, a dramatic transmission of the ... More

Variola major, the virus that causes smallpox, circulates continuously from one susceptible human to another. As the variola virus establishes its migratory sphere, a dramatic transmission of the virus occurs. By the eighteenth century, smallpox had become a universal disease that afflicted populations worldwide. This chapter reviews methods of combatting smallpox before 1800, focusing on a technique called variolation, which involves the exposure of an uninfected person to a person with a mild case of smallpox. Because of the great risks involved, this technique failed to gain official support in Japan. Nevertheless, Japanese physicians continued to seek ideas and instruction from foreign physicians who were experimenting with variolation techniques. The discovery of an alternative method by Edward Jenner before the end of the century initiated a revolution in medicine.Less