The Invention of Vaccines: Edward Jenner and Smallpox

Podcast: Mysteries and Histories · Georgia Marie

Opublikowano: 2026-09-16

In 1796, English doctor Edward Jenner noticed a local belief that milkmaids who caught cowpox, a usually mild disease, seemed protected from smallpox, one of history’s deadliest infections. He tested the idea by taking material from a cowpox sore on milkmaid Sarah Nelmes’s hand and inoculating eight-year-old James Phipps. James became mildly ill, recovered, and later did not develop smallpox when Jenner tested whether the cowpox exposure protected him. The experiment was ethically unacceptable by modern standards, but it demonstrated the principle behind vaccination: safely training the immune system to recognize a dangerous disease. Jenn...