Edward Jenner picture used in the layout is Courtesy of Smithsonian Libraries, Washington DC

Introduction

From Europeans to the Chinese to the Aztecs, smallpox left many people blinded, disfigured, and dead. For centuries, smallpox epidemics had decimated populations around the world until a British physician named Edward Jenner searched for a cure to smallpox by the inoculation of cowpox.

The Life of Edward Jenner, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.

"While still an apothecary's apprentice in the late 1760s, Jenner had been intrigued by possible relationships between smallpox, cowpox, and swinepox. At the time, he was ridiculed. By 1780, however, he returned to the idea, as evidenced in the conversation recorded here, and in 1789 he experimented by inoculating his own son, then aged one-and-a-half, with the swine pox, followed by conventional smallpox inoculation" (University of South Carolina).

This website was last updated:  Friday, March 19, 2004.