Daphne LovePette, age 12, of Costa Mesa, California, for her question:
How did smallpox vaccination first come about?
People usually give the credit to Dr. Edward Jenner of England. It is true that in the year 1796 he gave the sort of smallpox vaccination we get today. And it was the first of its kind, but the idea was not brand new. Many people had been thinking about it and even giving anti smallpox inoculations for at least a century before Dr. Jenner gave his first hot in the arm.
No one knows who first though of the idea, but the people of Turkey were using rather crude inoculations against smallpox early in the 1700s. We know about this from the writings of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey. Like everyone else, Lady Mary lived in horror of smallpox. When she learned that the people of Turkey did something to protect themselves from the dreaded scourge, she made careful observations and wrote detailed letters home to England. This was around 1718 and many people, including some influential doctors, began following Lady Mary's advice.
Throughout history, smallpox epidemics had taken a tremendous toll of life throughout the world. In the early 1700s, the population of London was about half a million and the death rate from smallpox averaged about 1,000 a year. Those that survived infection were scarred and pitted by the blistering spots. It was said that any woman who was not pockmarked was considered a beauty on the basis of her unblemished skin alone. No wonder Lady Mary, and every other lady, was very interested in any sort of remedy for the dangerous and disfiguring disease.
According to her letters, the Turkish people infected themselves with smallpox, hoping to get a mild attack that would make them immune. The inoculation was done in September, after the heat of summer, and all the community was invited to participate. The "doctor" was an old woman with a nutshell of liquid taken from the fever blisters of a smallpox patient. Each person was allowed to select a vein and into it the old lady drove her needle with a smidgen of germ filled liquid. After a few days, most of the group came down with a mild attack of smallpox. Later, they were immune from the serious epidemics.
Meantime, for centuries, the dairy maids of England had been catching cowpox from their cattle. This junior type smallpox caused a few feverish blisters on their hands and was too mild to serious. One of these girls told Dr. Jenner that she could never be marred by smallpox because she had had cowpox. It was known that one attack of smallpox made a person immune, now it seemed that an attack of very mild cowpox would do the job just as well. In 1796, Dr. Jenner decided to put this theory to the test. He vaccinated the arm of eight year old Jimmy Phipps with germy liquid from a cowpox blister on the hand of a dairy maid, Sarah Nelmes. After three months, the doctor took young Jimmy to visit smallpox patients where normally he would have been almost certain to catch the dread disease. But he did not. His vaccination had made him immune to smallpox.
Nowadays, of course, no doctor would dream of testing his theory on a child. But in those days, adults were more callous about using children to do their dirty work and solve their problems. Even in the last years of the 18th century, many people were critical of Dr. Jenner. However, most of them were concerned not about the risk to young Jimmy, but whether cowpox vaccinations would make them grow horns or turn into cows. Around 1800, these superstitions had abated and everybody was clamoring to be vaccinated.