Edward Jenner Cow-Pox

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small pox in Edward Jenner's time was common and deadly, if it didn't kill you it left you with pock scars for the rest of your days. having heard the old wives tale from his home town that claimed dairy maids where near immune to the smallpox disease, not yet understanding it was the acquisition of cow-pox that lead them to being immune to smallpox Edward Jenner may have been a physician in a world of medicine not yet as intertwined with the strict scientific method as we are now. however using the empirical process he was able to create a hypothesis test it using milkmaids and farm hands as studies groups and then use it to create one of the first standard vaccinations in the western world. he was at first ridiculed for his findings, at …show more content…
in the beginning of his studies Jenner uses almost exclusively adults and in the infantile stages of his experiment even using adults that had been previously infected with cow pox. it is not until later as he gains confidence that you see by reading the case studies that you begin to see him purposefully giving the dairy hands cow-pox and then later trying to infect them with Smallpox. in cases I-IV (1-5) Jeener is using patients having been previously infected with cow-pox at least 10 years prior if not more. case VI(6) changes slight where instead of using a childhood infected adult, Jenner uses someone who had very recently recovered from cow-pox and tries to infect them with smallpox to no avail. it is at case number XVII(17) that begin to see Jenner using healthy children(in this study children implies under the age of 16) to first infect them with the cow pox remark on the symptoms and try then soon after recovery purposely try to infect these children with the smallpox, again to no avail. just as interesting as reading further and further into his case studies that we see Jenner use children, but as soon after the start of using children he begins to use subjects as young as 5 seen in case XVIII(18) the very next case after he differs from adults. in case XXII Jenner uses two incredibly young children one infant of 1 and half years and a infant of just 11 months. Jenner even double checks the “virulent matter” he is using to test the Smallpox in the previously cow-pox infected subjects. “To convince myself that the variolous matter made use of was in a perfect state I at the same time inoculated a patient with some of it who never had gone through the cow-pox, and it produced the smallpox in the usual regular manner.” so at the end of Edward Jenner’s