49 Fun Facts About Edward Jenner

In which Gloucestershire town was Edward Jenner born in 1749?

Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, a small market town in the Vale of Berkeley, on 17 May 1749, and practised there for most of his life.

Jenner declined a naturalist's post on whose second Pacific voyage?

After helping Joseph Banks arrange specimens from James Cook's first voyage, Jenner turned down an offer to sail as naturalist on Cook's second voyage and returned to Gloucestershire.

What procedure did the young Jenner undergo at school that affected his health for life?

Jenner underwent variolation against smallpox at about eight: weeks of bleeding, purging and fasting followed by deliberate infection with smallpox matter, which left his health weakened for life.

At 13, Jenner was apprenticed for seven years to a surgeon in which town?

Jenner was apprenticed to Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon at Chipping Sodbury, for seven years before moving to London to study under a leading surgeon.

Under which famous surgeon did Jenner train at a London hospital from 1770?

John Hunter, the great experimental surgeon, took Jenner as a resident pupil at St George's Hospital in 1770 and remained his friend and correspondent for life.

What fossil did the geologically minded Jenner unearth in 1819?

Jenner, an enthusiastic fossil collector, unearthed the bones of a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile, in Gloucestershire in 1819.

From which university did Jenner obtain his MD in 1792?

Jenner obtained his MD from the University of St Andrews in 1792, a degree granted on the recommendation of two physicians rather than by examination.

Jenner's local club of physicians took its nickname from the inn where it met. What was it called?

Members dined in the parlour of the Fleece Inn at Rodborough and read papers; Jenner's covered angina and heart valves and mentioned cowpox.

Jenner was elected to the Royal Society for his study of which bird?

Jenner's 1788 paper on the cuckoo, based on years of watching nests near his home, won him election as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

What did Jenner discover that the newly hatched brood parasite does soon after hatching?

Jenner showed that the newly hatched chick ejects its foster siblings and their eggs from the nest, using a hollow in its back that disappears after about 12 days.

Which Victorian artist's observation of a blind brood-parasite nestling convinced Darwin that Jenner had been right?

Jemima Blackburn watched a blind, newly hatched nestling heave a meadow pipit chick out of its nest and drew it; Darwin cited her account in the sixth edition of the Origin.

How may Jenner have met his wife Catherine Kingscote in the 1780s?

In 1784, the story goes, his trial balloon came down on her father's estate, Kingscote Park, and Jenner married Catherine Kingscote in March 1788.

Which aristocrat imported variolation to Britain in 1721 after seeing it in Constantinople?

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the ambassador to the Ottoman court, had her daughter inoculated in London in 1721 after seeing the practice in Constantinople.

Which Dorset farmer vaccinated his family with cowpox in 1774, two decades before Jenner?

Benjamin Jesty, a farmer at Yetminster in Dorset, used a stocking needle to inoculate his wife and two sons with cowpox from a neighbour's cattle during a 1774 smallpox outbreak.

On what date did Jenner carry out his famous first vaccination?

On 14 May 1796 Jenner scratched cowpox matter from a milkmaid's hand into two small cuts on the boy's arm; a mild fever followed, then full recovery.

Who was James Phipps, the first person Jenner vaccinated?

James Phipps was his gardener's eight-year-old son; he was case 17 in the 1798 Inquiry, and Jenner later granted him a rent-free cottage.

Which milkmaid supplied the cowpox pus that Jenner scraped from her hands?

Sarah Nelmes, a dairymaid from a farm near Jenner's home, had fresh cowpox lesions on her hand; Jenner took matter from them for the experiment.

Jenner is often called the father of which science?

Jenner is often called the father of immunology, because his cowpox inoculation was the world's first vaccine.

How did Jenner prove Phipps was immune after the cowpox inoculation?

Weeks later he challenged him with smallpox material and no disease followed, the boy having been variolated in the usual way; a later challenge gave the same result.

What Latin name did Jenner give cowpox in the title of his 1798 Inquiry?

Variolae vaccinae, 'smallpox of the cow', was Jenner's Latin name for cowpox in his 1798 Inquiry, and it gave English the words 'vaccine' and 'vaccination'.

How many cases did Jenner analyse in his 1798 Inquiry, the pamphlet that named cowpox in Latin?

The 1798 Inquiry set out 23 cases, combining earlier observations of people who had caught cowpox naturally with his own inoculation experiments.

How much did Parliament grant Jenner for his vaccination work in 1802?

Parliament voted Jenner £10,000 in 1802 after a committee heard evidence of the vaccine's success; the money was meant to compensate his lost private practice.

Which Spanish mission of 1803–06 carried Jenner's vaccine to the Americas, Philippines and China?

The Balmis Expedition, led by Francisco Javier de Balmis, sailed from A Coruña in 1803 and vaccinated hundreds of thousands across Spanish America and the Philippines.

What did Napoleon do at Jenner's request while France was at war with Britain?

At Jenner's request Napoleon released two English prisoners of war, saying he could refuse nothing to one of the greatest benefactors of mankind; he had his own army vaccinated.

In which year did the British government ban variolation and offer cowpox vaccination free of charge?

The Vaccination Act of 1840 outlawed variolation and made cowpox vaccination free through the Poor Law medical officers; compulsion for infants came with the 1853 Act.

To which monarch was Jenner appointed physician extraordinary in 1821?

Jenner was appointed physician extraordinary to George IV in 1821, a largely honorary post that recognised his fame two years before his death.

What did Jenner present to the Royal Society in 1823, the last year of his life?

Jenner's last paper, Observations on the Migration of Birds, was read to the Royal Society in 1823 and argued, against the old belief, that swallows migrate rather than hibernate.

How did Jenner die in January 1823?

Jenner was found paralysed down his right side on 25 January 1823, an apparent stroke, and died the following day, aged 73.

In which year did the World Health Organization declare smallpox eradicated?

The World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated on 8 May 1980, two and a half years after the last natural case, in Somalia in October 1977.

Where are the two remaining official stocks of the smallpox virus kept?

By WHO agreement the only official stocks are held at the CDC in Atlanta and VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia, under high-security containment.

Which Harvard professor performed the first vaccinations in the United States in 1800?

Benjamin Waterhouse, professor of medicine at Harvard, vaccinated his five-year-old son and other household members in July 1800 with cowpox matter sent from England.

Genome sequencing shows vaccinia, the smallpox vaccine virus, is closest to which other virus?

Horsepox is vaccinia's closest known relative: a 2006 sequencing of a 1976 Mongolian horsepox isolate matched vaccinia far better than any cowpox strain, echoing Jenner's own belief that cowpox came from a horse ailment.

Who gave the generic name 'vaccines' to artificially weakened pathogens in honour of Jenner?

Unlike Jenner's naturally mild cowpox, Pasteur's chicken cholera and anthrax organisms were weakened in the laboratory.

Which US president wrote to Jenner in 1806 praising his extirpation of smallpox?

Thomas Jefferson, who had vaccinated his own family at Monticello in 1801, wrote to Jenner in 1806 that future nations would know of smallpox only from history.

Roughly what share of the population did smallpox kill in Jenner's era?

Smallpox killed around 10% of the population in Jenner's time, and as much as 20% in crowded towns and cities where it spread more easily.

Which Plymouth surgeon coined the word 'vaccination' in 1800?

Richard Dunning, a Plymouth surgeon and friend of Jenner, introduced the word 'vaccination' in his 1800 pamphlet Some Observations on Vaccination.

A statue of Jenner was erected in Trafalgar Square and later moved where?

The bronze Jenner by William Calder Marshall was unveiled in Trafalgar Square in 1858 and moved to Kensington Gardens in 1862, where it overlooks the Italian Gardens.

Jenner's 1999 Royal Mail 'World Changers' stamp issue paired him with which three Britons?

He was also voted into the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons in 2002, and a lunar crater and minor planet 5168 carry his name.

Which spot near the Gloucestershire village of Uley is locally called 'Smallpox Hill'?

Downham Hill, a small rounded outlier of the Cotswold escarpment beside Uley, carries the local name Smallpox Hill from its past use to isolate smallpox sufferers.

Jenner's name is carried by a vaccine research centre at which university?

The Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, founded in 2005, develops vaccines and produced the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine with the university's vaccine group.

In 1801 Jenner predicted that the 'final result' of vaccination must be what?

In his 1801 pamphlet On the Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation, Jenner wrote that the annihilation of smallpox 'must be the final result of this practice'.

What did the Royal Society do with Jenner's first cowpox paper in 1797?

Offered Jenner's 1797 cowpox paper, the Royal Society declined to publish it, warning him not to risk his reputation on so few cases; he published the fuller Inquiry privately the next year.

Jenner's former home, now a museum, is known by what name?

The Chantry, a Georgian house beside the parish church that Jenner bought in 1785, opened as the Jenner Museum in 1985.

Which London surgeon performed the capital's first vaccination in 1798 with matter Jenner sent?

Henry Cline, a surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital, vaccinated a boy in July 1798 with dried cowpox matter from Jenner, the first vaccination carried out in London.

Which English physician had realised by 1768 that cowpox infection protected against smallpox?

John Fewster, a Thornbury surgeon, reported in 1768 that people who had caught cowpox could not be variolated successfully, showing that cowpox protected against smallpox.

To which Bath physician and old friend did Jenner dedicate the 1798 Inquiry?

Jenner dedicated the Inquiry to Caleb Hillier Parry, his schoolfellow at Cirencester and a physician at Bath with whom he had shared his cowpox ideas.

In 1806 Jenner was elected a foreign member of the academy of sciences of which country?

Jenner was elected a foreign member of Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences in 1806, four years after the American Academy of Arts and Sciences had made him an honorary member.

Jenner's best-known poem, a list of weather omens, is titled 'Signs of' what?

Jenner's poem Signs of Rain strings together country weather lore, opening 'The hollow winds begin to blow, / The clouds look black, the glass is low'.

How many children did Jenner and his wife Catherine have?

Jenner and Catherine had three children: Edward, born in 1789, Catherine in 1794 and Robert in 1797.