Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, the son of a vicar. He was apprenticed to a surgeon at thirteen and later studied in London under the famous surgeon John Hunter, who told him not to think but to try. Returning to Berkeley as a country doctor, he also studied nature, showing how young cuckoos push other eggs out of the nest. Smallpox then killed many thousands each year, and survivors were often scarred or blinded. Jenner heard country people say that milkmaids who caught cowpox, a mild disease from cows, never caught smallpox. On 14 May 1796 he took matter from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid, Sarah Nelmes, and put it into scratches on the arm of James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener. Weeks later he exposed the boy to smallpox, and he did not fall ill. Jenner tested more cases and published his findings in 1798, calling the method vaccination, from the Latin for cow. Vaccination spread around the world within a few years. Jenner died in 1823. In 1980 smallpox was declared eradicated.

Faith: A Christian whose personal letters show him to have been quite spiritual. Source: Wikipedia