Edward Anthony

WARD anthonyEdward Anthony Jenner, (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an Englishphysician and scientist from Berkeley, Gloucestershire, who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine. He is oftencalled "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other man".
In the years following 1770, at least five investigators in England and Germany(Sevel, Jensen, Jesty 1774, Rendell, Plett 1791) successfully tested a cowpox vaccine in humans against smallpox.  For example, Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty  successfully vaccinated andpresumably induced immunity with cowpox in his wife and two children during a smallpox epidemic in 1774, but it was not until Jenner's work some twenty years later that the procedure became widelyunderstood. Indeed, Jenner may have been aware of Jesty's procedures and success.
Noting the common observation that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox, Jenner postulated that the pus in theblisters that milkmaids received from cowpox (a disease similar to smallpox, but much less virulent) protected them from smallpox. He may already have heard of Benjamin Jesty's success.
On 14May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, a boy eight years old (the son of Jenner's gardener), with pus scraped from the cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes,a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom, whose hide now hangs on the wall of the St George's medical school library (now in Tooting). Phipps was the 17th case described inJenner's first paper on vaccination. Jenner inoculated Phipps in both arms that day, subsequently producing in Phipps a fever and some uneasiness but no full-blown infection. Later, he injectedPhipps with variolous material, the routine method of immunization at that time. No disease followed. The boy was later challenged with variolous material and again showed no sign of infection.