ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY 14 May, 1796: world’s first vaccine developed

Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, administers the world’s first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox, a disease killed millions of people over the centuries.

While still a medical student, Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had contracted a disease called cowpox, which caused blistering on cow’s udders, did not catch smallpox. Unlike smallpox, which caused severe skin eruptions and dangerous fevers in humans, cowpox led to few ill symptoms in milkmaids.

On 14 May, 1796, Jenner took fluid from a cowpox blister and scratched it into the skin of an eight-year-old boy.

A single blister rose up on the spot, but the boy soon recovered. On 1 July, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with smallpox matter, and no disease developed.

The vaccine was a success.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, scientists following Jenner’s model developed new vaccines to fight numerous deadly diseases, including polio, whooping cough, measles, tetanus, yellow fever, typhus and hepatitis B. More sophisticated smallpox vaccines were also developed and by 1970 international vaccination programmes – such as those undertaken by the World Health Organisation – had eliminated smallpox worldwide.