How did Edward Jenner try out his cowpox experiment?

Answer 1

Edward Jenner was a country Doctor Who had studied nature and his natural surroundings since childhood. He had always been fascinated by the rural old wives tale that milkmaids could not get smallpox. He believed that there was a connection between the fact that milkmaids only got a weak version of smallpox - the non-life threatening cowpox - but did not get smallpox itself. A milkmaid who caught cowpox got blisters on her hands and Jenner concluded that it must be the pus in the blisters that somehow protected the milkmaids.

Jenner decided to try out a theory he had developed. A young boy called James Phipps would be his guinea pig. He took some pus from cowpox blisters found on the hand of a milkmaid called Sarah. She had milked a cow called Blossom and had developed the tell-tale blisters. Jenner 'injected' some of the pus into James. This process he repeated over a number of days gradually increasing the amount of pus he put into the boy. He then deliberately injected Phipps with smallpox. James became ill but after a few days made a full recovery with no side effects. It seemed that Jenner had made a brilliant discovery.

Answer 2

I give up! What DID Ed Jenner think about cowpox??

Answer 3

milkmaids and farmers where much less likely to get smallpox. The symptoms for cowpox and smallpox are similar initially, so he theorized that cowpox was a less severe variant of smallpox.

Answer 4

He saw that cow maids don't get small pox, so he investigated and he found that when someone have the mild cowpox disease they don't get smallpox, later he invented the first vaccine.