On this day in 1796, Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination. Jenner is often called “the father of immunology”, and his work is said to have saved “more lives than any other man”. In Jenner’s time, smallpox killed around 10% of the global population, with the number as high as 20% in towns and cities where infection spread more easily.
The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae (‘pustules of the cow’), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the title of his Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox.
Jenner postulated that the pus in blisters from sufferers of cowpox (a disease similar to smallpox but much less virulent) protected them from smallpox. On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of Jenner’s gardener. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom (whose hide now hangs on the wall of the St. George’s Medical School library, now in Tooting, London). Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner’s first paper on vaccination.
Jenner inoculated Phipps in both arms that day; this led to a fever and some uneasiness but no full-blown infection. Later, Jenner injected Phipps with variolous material, the routine method of immunization at that time and again no disease followed. The boy was later challenged with variolous material and again showed no sign of infection. There were no unexpected side effects, and neither Phipps nor any other recipients underwent any future ‘breakthrough’ cases.
US physician Donald Hopkins has written, “Jenner’s unique contribution was not that he inoculated a few persons with cowpox, but that he then proved [by subsequent challenges] that they were immune to smallpox.
People are still posting about the new Pope…
Today is the birthday, in 1937, of English studio guitarist Vic Flick best known for playing the guitar riff in the ‘James Bond Theme’. Flick played the riff on a 1939 English Clifford Essex Paragon Deluxe guitar plugged into a Fender Vibrolux amplifier and was paid a one-off fee of £6 for the recording. He also played a pastiche of the “James Bond” guitar part for The Beatles’ film A Hard Days Night – Ringos Theme (1964). Flick died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at a care facility in Los Angeles on 14 November 2024, at the age of 87. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9-cDa4JCwM
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