The Gloucestershire man behind the discovery of the vaccination
At the start of the biggest vaccination programme in the history of the NHS, it is worth remembering the man behind the first vaccine came from Gloucestershire.
Edward Jenner, a physician who lived in Berkeley, got the ball rolling in 1786 with his pioneering work on a smallpox vaccine.
He had noticed 'milkmaids' who hand milked cows caught cowpox, a virus related to smallpox but not so harmful.
In the 1800s smallpox was killing up to 20 per cent of the population in crowded towns and cities.
Jenner, along with other doctors and scientists, noticed the milkmaids seemed immune to smallpox.
On the 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his theory by inoculating an eight-year-old boy called James Phipps who was the son of his gardener.
He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught the disease from a cow called Blossom.
He inoculated James in both of his arms, using the pus, and then waited.After James had got over the slight fever the cow pox gave him, Jenner then gave him some pus from smallpox blisters which contained live viruses.
This is highly risky exercise and would never be allowed today, but James did not contract the disease.
It seemed the gamble had paid off and the young boy was immune.
Jenner's legacy cannot be overstated. In 1980, the World Health Organisation declared smallpox to be an eradicated disease.
Millions of lives have been saved and now, a new era of mass vaccination has started.
The so called birthplace of the vaccine lives on at the Jenner Museum, based at the scientist's former home in Berkeley.
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