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Prevention of Communicable Disease: Jenner

Smallpox is now a rare malady and is rapidly vanishing. This great change has been wrought in a single century by the discovery of vaccination on May 14, 1796, by Edward Jenner. On that day Jenner performed the first vaccination on a human being. Eight weeks later he fearlessly exposed his patient in smallpox hospitals and brought him into contact with smallpox patients without causing him to contract the disease. Vaccination has been called the greatest discovery ever made for the preservation of the human species. Millions of lives have been saved by it, and a thorough and continuous practice of vaccination will undoubtedly blot out smallpox from the face of the earth.

Jenner's discovery was based on a widespread belief that persons who had become infected with a similar disease of cattle, known as cowpox, were thereafter immune from smallpox infection. A remark made in his presence to this effect by a milkmaid was the "awakening impulse which after years of study and experiment culminated in the discovery which has conferred the greatest benefits upon the human race." eases.