Medical history
ritish doctor Edward Jenner changed the course of medical history – and world history, too – when, on 14 May 1796, he scratched cowpox into the arm of a’, Latin for cowpox - became the main weapon in the global fight against smallpox. The cartoon above, by satirist James Gillray, dates from 1802 and appeared against a backdrop of suspicion about the new vaccines. Gillray mocks widespread claims that recipients of the smallpox vaccines would develop bovine characteristics. It was the early-19th-century equivalent of fake news. The vaccines went on to save millions of lives around the world, but it wasn’t until 1980 that the World Health Organisation declared smallpox eradicated. Our current vaccination programme couldn’t be further removed from Jenner’s farmyard experiments, but it owes its very existence to the father of vaccinology.
