Edward Jenner

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Jenner, Edward,



See W. R. Le Fanu, A Bio-bibliography of Edward Jenner, 1749–1823 (1951).

Jenner, Edward


Born May 17, 1749, in Berkeley; died there Jan. 26, 1823. English physician; discoverer of the smallpox vaccine.

Jenner studied medicine in London, and in 1773 he began an independent medical practice. He observed that milkmaids that had recovered from cowpox were not susceptible to smallpox. On May 14, 1769, he inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with cowpox, and 1½ months later, with human smallpox; the boy did not become ill. Repeating on Phipps these inoculations over several months and years, Jenner demonstrated the possibility and high effectiveness of vaccinations against smallpox. A smallpox vaccination institute (the Royal Jennerian Society) was founded in London in 1803. Jenner was its first and lifetime director. He was also an honorary member of many academies, universities, and scientific societies of Western European countries.


An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Countries of England, Particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the Name of the Cow Pox. London, 1798.
Further Observations on the Variolae Vaccinae or Cow Pox. London, 1799.
In Russian translation:In Gubert, V. O. Ospa i ospoprivivanie, vol. 1. St. Petersburg, 1896. Chapter 14.


Gubert, V. O. EduardDzhenneri egootkrytie. St. Petersburg, 1896.
Karlik, L. N. “Eduard Dzhenner (k 150-letiiu so dnia otkrytiia ospoprivivamia).” Pediatriia, 1946, no. 4.
References in periodicals archive ?
En 1796, Edward Jenner demostro que la variolacion con viruela bovina en vez de la viruela humana protegia totalmente contra la enfermedad y evitaba que la persona padeciera siquiera la forma leve de viruela.
Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination for smallpox, suggested in 1801 that the human race could now look forward to "the annihilation of the smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species.
The great breakthrough came in 1796 when Edward Jenner, having pondered the apparent immunity of milkmaids to smallpox, inoculated a boy called Phipps with matter from a coxpox sore.
La vacuna antivariolosa habia sido inventada apenas en 1796 por el medico britanico Edward Jenner, quien observo que las ordenadoras contagiadas con cierta enfermedad de las vacas, llamada vacuna --que produce vesiculas purulentas parecidas a las de la viruela, pero en el ser humano es benigna--, no contraian viruela durante las epidemias de esta enfermedad.
Gradually, the idea of inoculation took hold, but immunization against smallpox did not become generally accepted until the milder vaccination using cowpox virus was identified by Edward Jenner in the 1860s.
And in estimating a baseline mortality figure of 130,658 dead from the epidemic of 1775-82, Fenn has captured a clear sense of how catastrophic a disease like smallpox was in the days before Edward Jenner developed an effective vaccine.
The drive to defeat it accelerated in the 18th century, when a British doctor named Edward Jenner developed the first smallpox vaccine, a substance to shield humans against the disease.
Interestingly, vaccination [from the Latin, vacca = cow] began in 1798 when Edward Jenner, an English surgeon, discovered that inoculating humans with material oozing from cows infected with cowpox could prevent smallpox.
In 1790 an English country doctor named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids appeared not to contract the disease, an observation that ultimately led to the use of the cowpox virus as a vaccine against smallpox.
1) This revolutionary work by Edward Jenner, a little-known provincial doctor, outlined the first ever theory of vaccination, making the eventual global eradication of smallpox possible.
This lesson plan calls for the student (the senior advisor) and his staff (group) to gather the scientific information necessary to advise the President, taking into account scientists like Galileo and Edward Jenner, both viewed initially with skepticism, but winning out against considerable odds.
We now refer to measles and polio vaccines and the prospect of AIDS vaccines as a matter of course, but a hundred years ago there was only one common human vaccine -- that for smallpox -- introduced in 1798 by Edward Jenner (1749-1823).