Edward Jenner: English physician who pioneered the concept of vaccines

Edward Jenner is well known English physician around the world for his innovative contribution to immunization and the ultimate eradication of smallpox. His work is widely regarded as the foundation of immunology—despite the fact that he was neither the first to suggest that infection with cowpox conferred specific immunity to smallpox nor the first to attempt cowpox inoculation for this purpose. In May 1796, Edward Jenner found a young dairymaid, Sarah Nelms, who had fresh cowpox lesions on her hands and arms.

On May 14, 1796, using matter from Nelms’ lesions, he inoculated an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps. Subsequently, the boy developed mild fever and discomfort in the axillae. Nine days after the procedure he felt cold and had lost his appetite, but on the next day he was much better. In July 1796, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. No disease developed, and Jenner concluded that protection was complete.

Nearly two years were to elapse between Dr. Edward Jenner's first vaccination in May 1796 and his subsequent experiments, which began in March 1798. In all, perhaps 15 persons were vaccinated. Publication of the findings quickly followed. Jenner published at his own expense, in September 1798, his now famous Inquiry (shorthand for its proper title, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Counties of England, Particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the name of the Cow Pox).

By the summer of 1799, Jenner's observations had been confirmed by a number of practitioners, and upwards of 1000 persons had been given the vaccine.

Subsequently, Jenner followed-up his original publication with a 1799 “Further Observations on the Variolae Vaccinae,” in which he detailed how to recognize typical Cow Pox lesions and to discriminate them from other similar pustular lesions that were not Cow Pox.
Edward Jenner: English physician who pioneered the concept of vaccines

History of immunology in modern era

John Fewster (1738-1824), a surgeon in Gloucestershire, England observed that a person who had been naturally exposed to cowpox, a viral disease of cattle related to smallpox, did not exhibit the normal mild case from smallpox when variolated.

He presented his observation to London Mdical Society in 1765 but never investigated further.

In 1798, Edward Jenner (1749-1823) inoculated a young man by named James Phipps with material obtained from a cowpox lesion. The results were conclusive but were met with great resistance by the Church.

It is the first demonstration of vaccination (smallpox vaccination). Jenner was a physician who practiced in the rural English countryside. As a country doctor, he was familiar with the ancient and unsafe technique of variolation – the administration of biological matter from smallpox sufferers to create immunity among those who survive the procedure.

One of which was that milkmaids who had caught cowpox never became infected with the more serious smallpox. Jenner suspected there to be a connection between the fact that milkmaids were commonly known to get cowpox, but not smallpox. That’s why he decided to try this theory by pacing the scab from a cowpox lesion into a cut made in arm of a young man James Phipps.

Élie Metchnikoff

Modern immunology begins with the research of Metchnikoff (1845-1916), who discovered the phenomenon of phagocytosis in starfish and extrapolated it to macrophages in humans as cells that engulf infections agents; this was the beginning of cellular immunology.

In 1840 the first modern proposal of the germ theory of disease was proposed Jakob Henle. He was a German physician, pathologist and anatomist. He is credited with the discovery of the loop of Henle in the kidney. Paul Ehrlich investigated the formation of antibodies recognized later as protein that destroyed infectious agents.

Ehrlich predicted autoimmunity calling it “horror autotoxicus”. He is the one coined the term of “chemotherapy”.

Louis Pasteur played a pivotal role in the evolution of the science. While Pasteur's work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris was concerned with bacterial infectious disease, he was most concerned with the prevention of diseases that bacteria caused and how the human body was changed subsequent to infection so as to resist further insults. Louis Pasteur became the first experimental immunologist.

Around 1960, it was appreciated that lymphocytes are the cells that mediate the immune reactions and experimentation moved for the first time from in vivo to in vitro, which allowed one to manipulate and investigate an immune reaction of cell population. Kendall A. Smith in 1983 discovered of the first interleukins 1 and 2.
History of immunology in modern era