Edward Jenner: They Said Milkmaids Never Caught Smallpox… So a Doctor Tested It

In the 1700s, smallpox killed hundreds of thousands of Europeans.

Country people believed that milkmaids were safe from it.

A doctor tested this on an eight-year-old boy.

Would the boy catch the disease?

This is the story of Edward Jenner.

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Smallpox. Smallpox was a very dangerous disease.

It caused a high fever and spots all over the body, and it often killed.

Smallpox killed about 400,000 Europeans a year.

Contagious. A contagious disease passes easily from one person to another.

Smallpox was terribly contagious.

Milkmaid. A milkmaid was a young woman whose job was milking cows by hand.

The milkmaid had cowpox sores on her hand.

Immune. If you are immune to a disease, you cannot catch it.

After cowpox, the boy was immune to smallpox.

Eradicate. To eradicate something means to destroy it completely, so that it never comes back.

The past is eradicated.

In 1980, smallpox was declared eradicated.

Now, one pattern: passive reporting.

We use it to say what people believed, without saying who believed it.

People thought that milkmaids were immune.

Milkmaids were thought to be immune.

Ready? Let's begin.

Edward Jenner was born in a small English town in 1749.

He lost both parents when he was about five, and his older brother and sisters looked after him.

At about thirteen, he began training with a country surgeon.

In the countryside, it was said that milkmaids rarely caught smallpox.

They often caught cowpox, a mild disease from cows.

Milkmaids were thought to be immune.

A famous story says a milkmaid told young Jenner this.

But historians believe that story was invented later.

At twenty-one, he went to London to study with a great surgeon, John Hunter.

Hunter gave him advice he never forgot: "Why think? Why not try the experiment?"

Then Jenner went home to work as a country doctor.

He was curious about everything.

He studied cuckoos, the birds that leave their eggs in other birds' nests.

In 1784, he even sent a balloon up into the sky.

But one question stayed with him.

Was the milkmaids' story true?

In May 1796, a young milkmaid, Sarah Nelmes, came to him with cowpox sores on her hand.

She had caught it from a cow called Blossom.

This was his chance.

But to test the idea, he needed someone who had never had smallpox.

On 14 May, he made two small cuts in the arm of James Phipps, his gardener's eight-year-old son.

He put in a little cowpox from Sarah's hand.

James felt a bit ill for a few days.

Then he was fine.

In July came the real test.

Jenner put smallpox itself into the boy's arm.

Then he waited.

One day. Two days. A week. Nothing happened. James did not get smallpox.

He was immune.

Jenner sent his report to the Royal Society, the most famous group of scientists in Britain.

They rejected it.

So in 1798, he published it himself.

Later, the new method was called vaccination, from vacca, the Latin word for cow.

Many people were afraid.

One cartoon showed vaccinated people growing cow heads!

But vaccination spread around the world.

It is said that Napoleon freed two English prisoners because Jenner asked him to.

In a little hut in his garden, Jenner vaccinated poor people for free.

Jenner died in 1823.

Smallpox, so deadly and so contagious, was once thought to be unbeatable.

But in 1980, the World Health Organization declared it eradicated.

It is still the only human disease ever wiped out completely.

And it all started with a milkmaid's story.

Let's review. Smallpox killed about 400,000 Europeans a year.

Smallpox was terribly contagious.

The milkmaid had cowpox sores on her hand.

After cowpox, the boy was immune to smallpox.

In 1980, smallpox was declared eradicated.

And remember: milkmaids were thought to be immune.

Edward Jenner's story teaches us: don't just laugh at an old idea or believe it, test it.

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