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Dr Jenner’s House Profile picture
@DrJennersHouse
Jul 16, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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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

🖼️ @ExploreWellcome Oil painting of man with greying hair, wearing a dark jacket
... 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 Two grave stones, the graves of Benjamin and Elizabeth Jesty
... 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 Photograph of a drawing of cowpox lesions on cow udder.
... 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 Cover page of An Inquiry into The Causes and Effects of the
... 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 Drawing of a hand with several large cowpox blisters on it.
... 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 Painting of Edward Jenner vaccinating a child.
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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More from @DrJennersHouse

Dr Jenner’s House Profile picture
Jun 7, 2022
Monkeypox is not smallpox.

Monkeypox is not a novel virus.

Monkeypox is probably not the next pandemic, but it's really helpful for us to be aware of what's going on. Struggling to wade through all the information? We've a little history with poxviruses so here's a 🧵... 1/15
Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease caused by monkeypox virus (an orthopox virus related to smallpox and cowpox but not in any way related to chickenpox... more on that later...). The virus was first identified in monkeys in 1958 but is probably usually found in rodents... 2/15
It can pass from animals to humans, through contact with the blood, bodily fluids or lesions of infected animals, causing fever, swollen lymph nodes and a distinctive rash. It is usually self-limiting, but in its most severe form can cause death in up to 11% of cases... 3/15
Read 15 tweets
Dr Jenner’s House Profile picture
Jan 6, 2022
Thanks so much to everyone who shared this 🧵 yesterday! We wanted to follow up with a few quick thoughts, inspired by Edward Jenner's approach, about how you might be able to have your own vaccination conversations with friends and family... 1/7 👇
1⃣ Try and have a conversation, come from a place of wanting to understand more about your family member/friend/colleague/acquaintance's concerns. Arguments can be counterproductive as they often just serve to entrench views.

... 2/7 👇
2⃣ Be positive. Vaccination saves lives, and makes an incredible difference to people across the world. Focus on that hope, rather than fear. Share the benefits of vaccination for them and/or their child as individuals, not what might happen if they’re not vaccinated.

... 3/7 👇
Read 7 tweets
Dr Jenner’s House Profile picture
Jan 5, 2022
We're often asked how Edward Jenner might approach conversations with people who are refusing or delaying vaccines and, actually, we've got a pretty good idea. You see, the vaccine pioneer was having these conversations all the way back in the early 1800s. Here's a 🧵... 1/6 👇 Portrait of Edward Jenner, wearing brown coat and leaning no
... Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination sentiment are as old as vaccination itself but then, as now, it was important to draw a clear distinction between the two. Edward Jenner was well aware that those he referred to as "the Anti-Vacks" were a loud minority... 2/6 👇 Highlighted text reading "the Anti-Vacks are assailing
... and he was also aware that very little he could do, or say, would change their minds. So he refused to debate or argue with them, and tried to discourage others from doing the same, out of concern that their views would be amplified through public discussion... 3/6 👇 Cartoon in ink and pen showing various people with cow-like
Read 6 tweets
Dr Jenner’s House Profile picture
Jul 16, 2021
But what did we do before vaccination? For perhaps hundreds of years before Jenner it was understood that if you contracted smallpox and survived it, you were unlikely to catch it again. So around the world practices of deliberate, controlled infection were carried out... 1/11 Microscopic image of Variola virus.
... The idea was that contracting smallpox in this controlled way was better than taking your chances catching it naturally. This was carried out in parts of Africa, India, China, and Turkey and practices varied according to local custom... 2/11

🖼️@ExploreWellcome CC-BY Block print illustration of a child with smallpox
... These practices were largely ignored in European and North American medicine until 1714 when a letter from Italian physician Emanuel Timoni was presented to the Royal Society. Timoni had worked in Turkey and it was there that he saw what he called "inoculation"... 3/11 Text from book: "An account, or history, of the procuri
Read 11 tweets
Dr Jenner’s House Profile picture
Apr 14, 2021
Time for a little break from the vaccination posts... Today is 14 April: St Tiburtius’ Day and traditionally the first day that cuckoos are heard in Britain. Here's a THREAD about cuckoos... 👇 1/4
... Cuckoos winter in Africa and migrate to Europe and Asia in the summer, hence their call is considered one of the signs that heralds the arrival of spring or summer. Cuckoos are brood parasites, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, including reed warblers... 2/4 Photograph of a cuckoo in a tree.
... They then rely on these other birds to raise their young. Once it was thought that the parent cuckoo stole the original eggs from the nest, but in a 1788 Royal Society paper Edward Jenner showed otherwise... 3/4

📷 Per Harald Olsen (via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reed…) CC BY SA Reed warbler feeding a massive cuckoo chick.
Read 4 tweets
Dr Jenner’s House Profile picture
Apr 14, 2021
Just one more that we’ve spotted overnight...
MYTH: “Jenner was a chancer who got lucky”
FACT: This takes away from the rigorous scientific approach that Jenner went through. He had a hypothesis, he tested it, he kept records of how the cowpox infection progressed... 1/4
... he repeated his experiment on multiple subjects, and then he committed to sharing his findings and helping others to vaccinate. Serendipity does have a role to play in science, and there are elements of it in Jenner’s work, but that doesn’t detract from what he did... 2/4
... It’s not the vaccine that saves lives, it’s vaccination. Jenner could have kept his work to himself but instead he wanted to share details of the practice, supplies of cowpox when he had them, and the means for others to identify and produce their own vaccine material... 3/4
Read 4 tweets

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