In 1774 Benjamin Jesty, a farmer from Dorset, made a bold decision to protect his family from a smallpox outbreak. He took material from a cowpox lesion on a cow's udder and scratched it onto the arms of his wife and two sons... 1/6
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... Jesty had previously contracted the disease himself and, like many others, believed that prior infection with cowpox would lead to immunity from smallpox.
But wait, this was 22 years before Edward Jenner's experiment! So was Benjamin Jesty the pioneer of vaccination? ... 2/6
... In 1789, five years before Jesty infected his family with cowpox, Jobst Bose from Göttingen in Germany reportedly tried out the technique for himself. It seems highly likely that there were others beyond Bose and Jesty taking these steps to artificially induce immunity... 3/6
... What Edward Jenner did was to apply scientific rigour to the subject, carrying out considered experiments multiple times on multiple subjects. Rather than keeping the technique to himself, he published his findings and set about ensuring that everyone had access... 4/6
... Jenner vaccinated people within his community free of charge, he shared details of the practice with medics and interested individuals alike, along with supplies of cowpox when he had them and the means for others to identify and produce their own vaccine material... 5/6
... In doing so he gave us a model for subsequent public health campaigns. Jesty, and others, are crucial in this story; they had the vaccine and took visionary steps to protect their families. But it was indeed Jenner who was responsible for the practice of vaccination. 6/6
We can't count...! In 3/6 above we meant to say that Jobst Bose's use of cowpox occured in 1769 (i.e. before Benjamin Jesty). Earlier still, in 1765, surgeon John Fewster wrote about the potential beneficial uses of cowpox but decided it didn't warrant further investigation.
Anyway, if you liked this thread, you might also like this one on the global history of the even earlier practice of inoculation (also known as variolation)!
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