Noting that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox, Edward Jenner, an English physician, postulated that the pus in the blisters that milkmaids received from cowpox, protected them from smallpox.

In 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who was the son of Jenner’s gardener. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid having cowpox and inoculated Phipps’ arms that day by scratching in the pus from Nelmes hands. Subsequently this produced in Phipps a fever and some uneasiness, but no full-blown infection. Later, he injected Phipps with pus from human smallpox blisters and no disease followed.

The word “vaccination,” coined by Jenner in 1796, is derived from the Latin root vaccinus, meaning of or from the cow. Once vaccinated, a patient develops antibodies that make him/her immune to cowpox, but they also develop immunity to the human smallpox virus. Since that time, the general public seems to have become totally confused about vaccinations as noted in an early cartoon of Jenner inoculating patients.

A problem with free speech in our wonderful country is that people who know nothing of the subject are allowed to speak with authority on it.

Please heed the advice of your physician.

 

Ed Field

Natchez