(1749-1823) English physician who pioneered vaccination. In Jenner's day, smallpox was a major killer. His discovery 1796 that inoculation with cowpox gives immunity to smallpox was a great medical breakthrough.
Jenner observed that people who worked with cattle and contracted cowpox from them never subsequently caught smallpox. In 1798 he published his findings that a child inoculated with cowpox, then two months later with smallpox, did not get smallpox. He coined the word “vaccination” from the Latin word for cowpox, vaccinia.
Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and studied at St George's Hospital, London. Returning to Berkeley, he set up a medical practice there.
In 1788, an epidemic of smallpox swept Gloucestershire and inoculations with live vaccine, taken from a person with a mild attack of the disease, were used. This method had been brought to England from Turkey in 1721 by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and had brought success to Dutch physiologist Jan Ingenhousz, but could be fatal. It was during this epidemic that Jenner made his initial observations. + prikaži više