EDWARD JENNER AND VACCINATION 



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thing about our bodies and their care. We have found that man 

 is able within hmitations to control his environment so as to make 

 it better to live in. All of the scientific facts that have been of 

 use to man in the control of diseases have been found out by men 

 who have devoted their lives to their work in the hope that their 

 experiments and their sacrifices of time, energy, and sometimes of 

 life itself might make for the betterment of the human race. Such 

 men were Jenner, Lister, Koch, 

 and Pasteur. 



Edward Jenner and Vacci- 

 nation. — The civilized world 

 owes much to Edward Jenner, 

 the discoverer of vaccination 

 to prevent smallpox. Born in 

 Berkeley, a little town of 

 Gloucestershire, England, in 

 1749, as a boy he showed a 

 strong liking for natural his- 

 tory. He studied medicine and 

 also gave much time to the 

 working out of biological prob- 

 lems. As early as 1775 he 

 began to associate the disease 



called COWpOX with that of Edward Jenner. 



smallpox, and gradually the idea of inoculation to prevent this ter- 

 rible scourge, which killed or disfigured hundreds of thousands every 

 year in England alone, was worked out and applied. He believed 

 that if the two diseases were similar, a person inoculated with the 

 mild disease (cowpox) would after a slight attack of this disease 

 be immune to the more deadly and loathsome smallpox. It was 

 not until 1796 that he was able to prove his theory, as at first few 

 people would submit to vaccination. War at this time was being 

 waged between France and England, so that the former country, 

 usually quick to appreciate the value of scientific discoveries, was 

 slow to give this method a trial. In spite of much opposition, how- 

 ever, by the year 1802 vaccination was practiced in most of the civ- 

 ilized countries of the world. At the present time the death rate 

 from smallpox in Great Britain, the home of vaccination, is less than 



