Jenner and vaccination Flashcards

All 7 cards in this deck

What did Edward Jenner develop?

Vaccination against smallpox, using cowpox, which made it possible to prevent people getting smallpox.

How did the public and Parliament show acceptance of Jenner's work?

Parliament gave him a grant, and there was public recognition of the improvement in preventing illness.

True or false? Jenner could explain scientifically why his smallpox vaccination worked.

False. He could not explain how it worked; Pasteur's Germ Theory (1861) later provided the scientific explanation.

What was smallpox inoculation, used in Britain from the 1720s?

Deliberately infecting a healthy person with matter from a smallpox sore, so they caught a mild case and became immune. It was risky (some died) and costly.

What experiment did Jenner carry out on James Phipps in 1796?

He gave the boy cowpox, then later exposed him to smallpox. Phipps did not catch smallpox, supporting Jenner's idea that cowpox gave protection.

How did Jenner make his findings public in 1798?

The Royal Society refused to publish them, so he paid to publish his own book, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae.

Give one reason some people opposed Jenner's vaccination.

Any one: inoculators feared losing the money they earned; some thought giving people a disease from cows was unnatural; some believed it went against God's will.