Edward Jenner (AQA GCSE History)

How significant was Edward Jenner's work for medicine in Britain? - Timeline & Summary

Timeline

Edward Jenner’s work was incredibly significant for medicine in Britain because he developed the first successful vaccine targeting smallpox disease. In the 18th century, smallpox was a deadly disease that killed thousands and left survivors with terrible scars. Jenner discovered that people who caught cowpox, a similar but much milder disease, did not get smallpox. His vaccine saved countless lives. The British government supported his work by making his vaccine compulsory. The smallpox vaccine was a major breakthrough because it was the first time science had found a reliable way to prevent a disease. Jenner’s discovery inspired other scientists to investigate vaccines, eventually leading to the development of vaccines for other diseases like rabies.

However, Jenner’s work faced opposition at the time. Some people did not trust the vaccine. The public did not understand how it worked or disliked using material from cows in humans. Even the scientific community did not support Jenner's work, due to Jenner's background and his lack of knowledge about why his vaccine worked. Additionally, Jenner's method could not be directly used to create vaccines for other illnesses. It was not until much later, with the discovery of Germ Theory by Louis Pasteur, that scientists fully understood how vaccines worked and were able to build on Jenner’s ideas.

Jenner’s smallpox vaccine marked a turning point in the fight against disease.

Smallpox & inoculation

What was smallpox?

• Smallpox is an illness which causes a fever and pus-filled rashes across the body

• The disease was incredibly dangerous, killing as many as 30% of victims

  • Most of these were children

  • The worst epidemic in Britain was in 1796 when 3,548 people died

• Before Germ Theory, people did not understand what caused smallpox

• Scientists had noticed those who had a mild case of smallpox never caught it again

What was inoculation?

• A method to prevent smallpox was inoculation

  • An inoculator would rub pus from a smallpox scab into a cut on the patient or crush a scab for the patient to snort up their nose

Issues with inoculation

• Inoculation caused many problems:

  • inoculation was expensive so many could not pay for their services

    • Inoculators became extremely wealthy

  • some patients died of the inoculation process 

Who was Edward Jenner?

• Edward Jenner was a doctor in Gloucestershire in the 18th century

• Jenner had experienced the inoculation process as a child

  • He found the process traumatising

• Jenner gathered over 1000 cases where inoculation had failed to prevent smallpox

  • He believed there was a better way to prevent smallpox

Jenner & the smallpox vaccination

• Jenner noticed that dairymaids did not catch smallpox during epidemics

  • He regularly treated the maids for cowpox

    • The disease caused similar blistering to the skin as smallpox but was not deadly

• Jenner decided to test the link between smallpox and cowpox

  • In 1796, Jenner gave a young boy called James Phipps cowpox

  • Six weeks later, he infected James with smallpox

    • He did not catch smallpox

  • He published his findings in 1798 in An Enquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variola Vaccinae

    • The term ‘vaccination’ comes from the Latin ‘vacca’ for cow

Reactions to the smallpox vaccination

Society's reaction

Government reaction

• The British government preferred vaccination to inoculation

  • It was much safer

  • It was cheaper because people did not need to go into quarantine

• The government took steps to change public opinion of vaccination

  • In 1840, it became illegal to inoculate people

  • The government paid for children's smallpox vaccination from taxes

  • In 1852, the government made smallpox vaccination compulsory for children up to 3 months old

  • In 1871, doctors received payment for vaccinating people against smallpox

  • In 1872, the government fined those who refused to vaccinate their children

Significance of Jenner

Short-term significance

• Jenner's vaccine faced initial criticism

  • Between 1801 and 1803, only 12,000 British people had been vaccinated

  • The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was created to oppose the compulsory smallpox vaccine

  • Vaccinators made mistakes

    • Patients died of infection because they reused needles

    • Others were accidentally given smallpox due to a mix-up in samples

Long-term significance

• By the end of the 19th century, there was less opposition to the smallpox vaccine

• The number of smallpox cases dropped from 1872

  • By 1979, the World Health Organisation declared that smallpox no longer spreads naturally or exists in humans

• Jenner's work inspired other scientists like Pasteur and Koch to develop vaccines

  • However, Jenner’s method would not work for any other diseases except for smallpox