Jenner gave life-saving jabs for free, declaring it would be "immoral" to profit from them. When word of Jenner's miraculous cure for smallpox spread, queues of poor farmworkers stretched from the shed right into the churchyard. Perhaps it should become a shrine to the millions that immunisation has saved from many diseases since, including smallpox (now completely eradicated thanks to vaccines), polio, and, of course, Covid. Somewhat amazingly, this quirky structure of stone, bark and thatch survives. In the corner of his own garden, Jenner playfully named the shed where he'd given James' injection "The Temple of Vaccinia" and characterised himself as the "faithful priest of vaccination". Visitors can walk down a leafy path from Jenner's home to see Phipps Cottage, now a private home marked by a plaque in Church Lane. Jenner demonstrated the world's gratitude to James by giving him a house. The boy survived the process, was thereafter immune to the deadly disease circulating in the area and proved a theory that has gone on to save millions. It is not known whether his first subject, James Phipps – the gardener's eight-year-old son – volunteered or even knew what he was in for, but Jenner didn't take his contribution lightly. In many ways, Jenner was centuries ahead of his time. In an era of blood-letting leeches and purgatives of mercury, this was a revolutionary concept. He hypothesised that if he gave mild cowpox to people, it would stimulate some sort of internal safety system to protect people against smallpox. Jenner was inspired by the milkmaid's comments to devise a much better solution: a harmless but effective injection to confer immunity. They hopefully survived… and then would be immune. The early inoculators simply gave the full disease to patients when they were young and strong. This simply involved injecting a dose of an actual disease, like a modern chickenpox party – where parents bring their toddlers together to deliberately pass the infection at an early age and infer immunity against later cases, which can have much more serious consequences. Local milkmaids knew that once you had cowpox you never got smallpox.Īt the time, the medical profession was wrestling with emerging theories of inoculation. It is said that a milkmaid told Jenner she wasn't worried about catching smallpox – because she'd already caught the much milder "cowpox" from her cows. The churchyard alongside his garden houses graves of many contemporary victims. It was one of the most dangerous viruses humans have faced, with a death rate of around 30% and terrible permanent disfigurement of survivors. Village legend tells that Jenner was very concerned with local smallpox outbreaks.
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