The Jenner Trial During The 1700s

The Jenner Trial

"The smallpox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the bighearted maiden objects of horror to the lover" (Macaulay). Imagine walking down the busiest street in 1700s London, and you only saw a dozen people. In every window, bodies swelling with bumps were everywhere. Dead, ravaged bodies were tossed aside. No one could escape smallpox’s destruction. During the 1700s in Europe, 400,000 more were left dead with each passing year. The lucky survivors became deaf, blind, scarred,
“He [Edward Jenner] was bled until pale, then purged and fasted repeatedly, until he wasted to a skeleton. He was denied solid food in favor of a vegetable drink that was supposed to sweeten the blood” (Kerns). Jenner’s miserable variolation experience made him realize how important it was to find a new way to prevent smallpox and helped him understand how his adversary worked. As a teenager, a milkmaid had told him, “Now I'll never take the Small pox, for I have had the Cow pox’’ (Unknown). Later in his life, it inspired the approach he took to eliminating smallpox. According to a Stanford student, cowpox was similar to that of smallpox; both cause skin lesions and occasionally colds. Noticing the similarities, Jenner was able to learn about smallpox and create a vaccine from cowpox material. His early experiences poured a strong educational foundation of diseases and specifically
“It was his gift to the world”, Trueman said about the vaccine. Jenner did not patent his vaccine, for If he had it would have made it out of reach for most people (Trueman). “I shall endeavour still further to prosecute this inquiry, an inquiry I trust not merely speculative, but of sufficient moment to inspire the pleasing hope of its becoming essentially beneficial to mankind” (Jenner). What mattered to him was the impact the vaccine would leave on the world. Edward Jenner devoted the rest of his life to spreading his vaccine. The “vaccine clerk to the world”, is how Jenner referred to himself, since he travelled the world transferring pock material (Smallpox - The Speckled Monster). The British government compensated him for his service to the world (Smallpox - The Speckled Monster). In order to, honour Blossom (the cow) and Sarah Neimus, the name vaccine was based after the Latin word for cow, vacca (Edward Jenner - Biography, Facts and Pictures). One-hundred years post smallpox vaccine, Louis Pasteur created the rabies and anthrax vaccines (Smallpox - The Speckled Monster). According to Jenifer Ehreth, 5,977,855 lives are prevented annually from vaccination. The World Health Organization followed in Jenner’s steps, spreading vaccines. As of 1980, smallpox was officially declared eradicated (Centers for Disease Control and