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A method to stop catching smallpox, through inoculation was the main ‘treatment’ by a method which had brought success to a Dutch physiologist, Jan Ingenhaus and was brought to England in 1721.
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Edward Jenner was born on May 17, 1749
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In 1764, Jenner began his apprenticeship with George Harwicke. During these years, he acquired a sound knowledge of surgical and medical practice
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In 1770, he moved to the esteemed ‘St. George’s hospital’, located in London, where he worked under the apprenticeship of renowned physician John Hunter. He even pursued his studies in Anatomy at the same time.
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After spending three years with John Hunter, Jenner returned to Gloucestershire in 1773 to work as a doctor. He then started a consortium of medical practitioners called ‘Fleece Medical Society’, also popularly known as ‘Gloucestershire Medical Society’, along with few other contemporary physicians.
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In 1788 a wave of smallpox swept through Gloucestershire and during this outbreak Jenner observed that those of his patients who worked with cattle and had come in contact with the much milder disease, cowpox, never came down with smallpox.
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His findings about Cuckoo birds were well-lauded and appeared in the premier scientific association’s journal, ‘Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society’, in 1788.
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Jenner pursued his higher studies in medicine by enrolling himself at the renowned ‘University of St Andrews’, located in Scotland. He graduated from this repute institution in the year 1792.
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Jenner helped a little boy be unable to get smallpox. He have the kid a mild dose of cowpox and the kid was then exposed to smallpox and was showing no reaction.
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In 1805, this physician became an integral part of another consortium, known as the ‘Medical and Chirurgical Society’, which was later re-christened as the ‘Royal Society of Medicine’.
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Jenner was elected to be a member of the esteemed ‘Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’, in 1806.
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This renowned doctor was appointed as the personal physician of the ruler, King George IV, in 1821. Very few physicians from England had received the honour of serving the monarch.
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Jenner was found in a state of apoplexy in January 1823, with his right side paralyzed. He never fully recovered, and finally died of an apparent stroke on 26 January 1823, aged 73, in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England.
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In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox an eliminated disease.
