In the earlier days they used the inoculation method to try and prevent the spread of smallpox. Inoculation is a method in which you take the disease from one person and inject or insert it into another in order to create an immunity to the disease. This often times made more people sick then it helped gain immunity. This is where a man named Edward Jenner becomes so important. Edward Jenner was born May 17, 1749 in South West England. At a very young age of 13 years he started a career as a surgeon by becoming a student surgeon. When he finished this schooling he went to become yet again a student of a very famous London surgeon, John Hunter. He worked with Hunter for about 2 years until Hunter himself died. Not only was he very educated and involved in the sciences, but he was also very skilled in the violin and did a little poetry as well.
Because of his medical history and background studies, I assume, he was interested in learning more about smallpox and what to do about this deadly disease. So of course being the scientist that he is, he decides to perform some experiments after he conducts some research. He was hearing a rumor that was going around that stated milkmaids often didn’t get smallpox or were less sickly when they developed smallpox. A milkmaid usually did a lot of touching of cows and their udders to be able to milk them so this did make some sort of sense. It was also very common for cows to have another disease called cowpox which usually developed on their udders, and was in the same family of diseases as smallpox. So from this evidence he formed a hypothesis. You can develop immunity from smallpox after developing cowpox. Now the only thing left to do was to to test it. To learn about the test click on the next tab.
Because of his medical history and background studies, I assume, he was interested in learning more about smallpox and what to do about this deadly disease. So of course being the scientist that he is, he decides to perform some experiments after he conducts some research. He was hearing a rumor that was going around that stated milkmaids often didn’t get smallpox or were less sickly when they developed smallpox. A milkmaid usually did a lot of touching of cows and their udders to be able to milk them so this did make some sort of sense. It was also very common for cows to have another disease called cowpox which usually developed on their udders, and was in the same family of diseases as smallpox. So from this evidence he formed a hypothesis. You can develop immunity from smallpox after developing cowpox. Now the only thing left to do was to to test it. To learn about the test click on the next tab.