Birth of Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner was born on 17 May 1749 in Berkeley. An English physician from Gloucestershire, Jenner is celebrated as the pioneer of vaccination. Having noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox seemed protected against smallpox, he tested the idea in 1796 by inoculating a boy, James Phipps, with material from a cowpox sore and later exposing him to smallpox, to which he did not succumb. He published his findings in 1798, and the method, named from the Latin word for cow, spread across Europe and the world. Smallpox was eventually declared eradicated in 1980, the only human disease so far to be wiped out through vaccination.

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