Edward Jenner Essay

Edward Jenner, known as the “Father of Immunology”, was a country doctor who significantly impacted the history of medicine and health with a huge medical breakthrough: the development of the smallpox vaccine. Smallpox was an ancient yet deadly disease that spread rapidly and impacted every class in society starting from the times of the Egyptians in 1570 BC. It was considered to be the most feared and likely the greatest killer during his time, killing up to 33% of those who contracted it worldwide. This was the first vaccine to ever be created successfully, saving countless lives in the process, eventually leading to the end of smallpox. Born in the small village of Berkeley in Gloucestershire on May 17th, 1749, Edward Jenner was the eighth
Due to his sense of curiosity, he observed that people who caught cowpox, a disease considered harmless, were not affected by smallpox. They essentially seemed immune to smallpox, which pioneered his theory. At this time, the only possible treatment for smallpox was variolation, or inoculation, which was a method that deliberately infected them with the disease. However, this method of treatment commonly had fatal results. Jenner tried many times to put forth his theory to other physicians, but they typically shut down his ideas on the basis that they had seen victims of smallpox who previously had cowpox. However, Jenner was persistent, took a step, and experimented his theory on a little 8-year-old boy named James Phipps in 1796. He asked for assistance from a dairymaid named Sarah, who had been affected by cowpox, by taking pus from the cowpox sores in her arm. He then proceeded to make a small cut on James, smearing the pus into the cut. Later on, James did catch cowpox, but Jenner proceeded on with his theory, inoculated James with a small dose of smallpox, and waited to see if James was affected by smallpox. Miraculously, Jenner’s theory was proven correct and he created the first successful vaccination in history. From then on, this procedure became widely known and the death rate of smallpox decreased
His strong sense of curiosity and observation stemmed into other fields of medicine. For example, in 1783, Jenner developed a method to make the treatment, Tartar Emetic, which was used to treat parasitic diseases, less toxic and more reliable. In addition to this, Jenner also pioneered research into heart diseases, more specifically chest pain, and discovered that the large arteries around the heart were typically lined with fat deposits, observing that this was likely to be linked with chest pain. Lastly, nearly 200 years after he created the smallpox vaccine, the World Health Organization ultimately deemed smallpox a completely eradicated disease in