Edward Jenner

Jenner tied the knot with a woman named Catherine Kingscote in March 1788.

In 1802, he was appointed as a member of the ‘American Academy of Arts and Sciences’.

Jenner was elected to be a member of the esteemed ‘Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’, in 1806.

Edward Jenner was born to a clergy named Reverand Stephen Jenner on 17th May, 1749, at Berkeley, Gloucestershire. Amongst the nine children born to his parents, he was the eighth.

He pursued his primary education at places like Cirencester and the market town of Worren-under-Edge. During his younger days, Jenner had contracted the dreaded smallpox epidemic and had to deal with this health problem for the rest of his life.

Edward started interning as a medical practitioner, under the guidance of a surgeon named Daniel Ludlow, when he was barely fourteen years old. After working with Ludlow for a period of seven years, he gained enough experience to begin his career as a full-fledged physician.

In 1770, he moved to the esteemed ‘St. George’s hospital’, located in London, where he worked under the apprenticeship of renowned physician John Hunter. He even pursued his studies in Anatomy at the same time.

His mentor John enlightened Edward about the renowned physician William Harvey’s approach towards medicine, which greatly helped the young man in his career.

After spending three years with John Hunter, Jenner returned to Gloucestershire in 1773 to work as a doctor. He then started a consortium of medical practitioners called ‘Fleece Medical Society’, also popularly known as ‘Gloucestershire Medical Society’, along with few other contemporary physicians.

During the various gatherings of this medical society, this physician presented papers which gave an insight of various ailments such as Opthalmia, Angina Pectoris, Cowpox and Cardio Vascular diseases.

Jenner ventured into Zoology during the 1780’s, by penning his observations about the bird Cuckoo. The physician had inferred that Cuckoo babies had a depression on their backs, which helped in keeping the other eggs in the nest secure and preventing any form of damage.

Jenner turned into a world renowned doctor through his invention of the vaccine to eradicate smallpox. He apparently scraped the pus formed on the bodies of people infected with Cowpox and injected it in the body of his gardener’s son. Although the boy suffered from fever initially, he became immune to Smallpox.