Thread by @DrJennersHouse

Here it is...
🚨 THE DR JENNER'S HOUSE MYTH BUSTING THREAD 🚨
We've fielded loads of questions over the past couple of days about Jenner and smallpox and we just wanted to set the record straight on a few things. Get ready, it's a long old thread coming up! 👇 1/17

MYTH: "People have been vaccinating for 1000s of years"
FACT: Inoculation and vaccination are now used to describe the same thing, but historically inoculation referred to deliberate infection with smallpox virus with the intention of provoking immunity against smallpox... 2/17

... which is the process that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (AMAZING woman) introduced to Britain after seeing it practised in Turkey. Jenner's first vaccination in 1796 (originally termed 'vaccine inoculation') used a different, less dangerous virus, cowpox. 3/17

MYTH: "Benjamin Jesty needs more credit"
FACT: It seems that people had long believed that cowpox would protect against smallpox. Jesty deliberately infected his family in 1774, but even he wasn't the first to do this. What Jenner did was to apply science to the folklore... 4/17

... Jenner carried out controlled repeated experiments. Jesty did not. When we're describing Jenner as the pioneer of vaccination what's so important is that he had the determination to share his work + prove its effectiveness on multiple cases. And that's what he did first. 5/17

MYTH: "Jenner wasn't a proper doctor anyway, he bought his degree"
FACT: Jenner's medical training consisted of a 6 year apprenticeship with an experienced surgeon followed by 2 years in London training under the renowned John Hunter. There were no degrees for surgeons... 6/17

... Jenner was qualified to practice, nonetheless. Later he set about obtaining a medical degree so that he could expand his practice. Prior to 1862, St Andrews awarded these on recommendation to experienced medics and in 1792 Jenner was successful in his application. 7/17

MYTH: "Jenner killed his son by vaccinating him"
FACT: This one makes us really sad + has absolutely no basis in fact. Jenner's eldest son, Edward, was born with learning difficulties and died in 1810 having contracted tuberculosis from a tutor employed for his education... 8/17

... He had not been vaccinated as he was already immune to smallpox from variolation (inoculation with smallpox, as described above). Jenner's other son Robert was vaccinated as a child and had a career in the military before his death in 1854. 9/17

MYTH: "Smallpox would have just gone away anyway without vaccination"
FACT: People often list improved hygiene or even just the natural death of disease as the reasons for the eradication of smallpox. The truth is that no other human disease has just "gone away"... 10/17

... Smallpox was eradicated after a targeted vaccination campaign. It will not come back. Cases of other diseases have dramatically reduced with the introduction of vaccination and, conversely, increased when vaccine takeup has been low. For more see who.int/vaccine_safety… 11/17

MYTH: "Other diseases have been eradicated and come back, so why not smallpox?"
FACT: Smallpox is the only disease to have been 'eradicated': completely wiped out, not present anywhere in the world. Other diseases, like measles, have been 'eliminated' from some countries... 12/17

... Elimination occurs when diseases are not constantly circulating, but you can still have outbreaks of disease where it has been eliminated (usually when unvaccinated individuals go on holiday to countries where that disease is still endemic). Smallpox has been eradicated 13/17

And finally...
MYTH: "Smallpox must still be a threat because I was vaccinated recently"
FACT: There are only two laboratories in the world allowed to keep samples of the smallpox virus. Some governments are concerned that other samples may exist... 14/17

... So routine vaccination of some armed forces and certain lab workers does still take place, and smallpox vaccine is still stockpiled, so that people can be protected should smallpox be deliberately released in order to cause harm. 15/17

Thank you for joining us on this journey through some of the more common myths we've seen circulating recently. If you've found it useful please share and give us a follow @DrJennersHouse. We are, as you might have guessed, former home of vaccine pioneer #EdwardJenner ... 16/17

... If you like medical history, vaccines, the Georgians then you'll probably like us so do pop along and visit (see jennermuseum.com for more details). We're also a charity, so if you like our work please consider supporting us via cafdonate.cafonline.org/7132 THE END 👋 17/17

For ease of crediting, all of the pictures in tweets 2-11 are from @ExploreWellcome or @sciencemuseum, were obtained from wellcomecollection.org and are used under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0). The other images are from our collection.