Day Three Hundred and Twenty-one

Feest Isolation Days – 29 January 2021

This is my Edward Jenner day, I shall raise a toast to the man tonight, today I am to have my first Covid vaccination! 

Edward Jenner was a local doctor who probably saved more lives than any other human being.

Jenner was born in May 1749 in Berkeley, Glos, the eighth of nine children of the local vicar, Stephen Jenner.  From age 14 he was apprenticed to a local surgeon and then trained formally at St George’s Hospital with the great John Hunter.  He returned to Berkeley in 1773 as a local doctor and surgeon.

At that time smallpox, or variola, was a scourge which puts Covid in perspective – it was always circulating around, caused severe fever, and pustules on the skin – the “pox” -and around ten percent of the population died of it.  Of those infected 1 in 3 died, and over half the survivors had lifelong pockmarks.  If one person caught it, 6 in 10 of their family would catch it.  It is a virus which spreads somewhat similarly to Covid in droplets, but also from skin flakes from the scabs. Infection was often from contamination of surfaces, bedding clothing etc: smallpox stays viable on surfaces longer than Covid.

It had been recognised for centuries that those who had experienced the smallpox were then protected from it, and some forms of inoculation with skin scrapings from sufferers from a mild form was practised in some parts of the world, known as “variolation”, and introduced io Britain around 1721.  The idea was to give mild disease and thence protection. It was a dangerous practice, there was a risk those inoculated could become ill, and even spread the disease.   Jenner was “variolated” when young, became ill and apparently suffered lifelong illness from it.

There was folklore suggesting that those who had the cowpox, Latin name “Variola Vaccinia” (meaning “pox of the cow”), did not get smallpox or react to variolation.  There were people other than Jenner interested in this.  A Dorset framer, Benjamin Jesty, is said to have inoculated and protected his wife and children with cowpox and protected them in the smallpox epidemic of 1774.  Another physician around Berkley, John Fewster, may have inoculated some people with cowpox a little before Jenner, but this was never written up and he apparently decided that cowpox inoculation was of no value[1].  The popular story is that Jenner noticed the milkmaids, who all caught cowpox, did not get smallpox, although he may well have been alerted by Fewster.  Whatever the background, it was Jenner who realised the potential importance of this, experimented with it, and eventually published it.  It was classic science, a great example of clear thought.

Jenner inoculated 24 people with cowpox material from a milkmaid with the disease, including his own 10-month-old son, and demonstrated that variolation then had no effect on them.  Health and safety would never allow this today!  Despite initial resistance from the medical establishment, and anti-vaxxers, who are certainly not a new phenomenon, his findings were published in 1798. 

As he inoculated with Variola Vaccinia, Jenner called the process “Vaccination”.

From these beginnings, vaccination was developed.  By 1840 the British Government had banned variolation, and today smallpox has been eradicated from the world.  With this and all the other lives saved by other vaccines, Jenner’s work has led to the saving of millions of lives.

Jenner had many other interests.  When young he experimented with ballooning, and is thought to have met his wife, Catherine Kingscote, when his balloon landed in Kingscote Park, not far from Berkeley.  He is credited with advancing the understanding of ischaemic heart disease.  Jenner was also a keen zoologist and was the first to observe and describe how baby cuckoos push the other fledglings out of their adopted nest!

There is a delightful museum about all of this in Jenner’s old house in Berkeley.

Anti-vaxxers started in Jenner’s time and have been around ever since – the first cartoon below is from 1930.

There is still a lot of muddled thinking around…

Meanwhile, back to today, I am off for my jab, the first step in developing freedom from the restrictions of Covid.  What we need now is for Kathy to get hers, she is younger and lower down the priority list, but hopefully it will be within 3 or 4 weeks.

Be careful, stay safe, freedom is in sight!

Terry

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[1] An examination of John Fewster’s role in the discovery of smallpox vaccination thurston.pdf (rcpe.ac.uk)