Pox precursors

Abstract

Edward Jenner is celebrated as the inventor of vaccination but others were also working on the idea, writes Nigel Williams. Edward Jenner is celebrated as the inventor of vaccination but others were also working on the idea, writes Nigel Williams. While Edward Jenner is widely acclaimed as the founder of vaccination against smallpox, there is growing evidence that another provincial doctor had carried out a procedure of transferring cowpox to humans as a means of protection against smallpox, 20 years before Jenner's much publicised work. The discovery of a portrait of Jenner's contender has added to the claim. This physician was Benjamin Jesty, working in rural south-west England and his claim to fame is now well documented. He had not only pondered the evidence that cowpox protected against smallpox, but also followed through his idea by inserting with a darning needle pustular material from an infected cow into the arms of his wife and two sons. Jesty, in common with many rural people, was fully aware of the age-old link that people who had earlier caught the mild cowpox disease did not normally catch the often fatal smallpox. The newly discovered portrait is closely bound up with the evidence of Jesty's claim, as it was commissioned by the directors of the original Vaccine Pock Institution, run by Dr. George Pearson. In 1805, the institution invited Jesty to London, interrogated him about his experiment, and had the portrait painted as a testimonial to him. The portrait came to light when a dealer in north-east England contacted the Wellcome Library in London about a portrait she had been engaged to sell for a client. The oil painting was that of Jesty. The verbal evidence of Jesty's examination was published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, while the ownership of the portrait passed to his descendants. It was only the work of microbiologist Patrick Pead, who had a long-standing interest in the Jesty story, who discovered the long-disappeared portrait. But despite the portrait and interrogation by doctors in London, Jesty never received credit for his pioneering work, with all the credit and financial rewards going to Jenner with his many friends in the medical establishment in London who spent considerable time and money refining the technique. Jenner never accepted that he had been pre-empted over vaccination by Jesty. However, the Jestys freely admitted that they were probably not the first with vaccination, as indicated behind the parish church in the home village of Worth Maltravers. It states that Jesty was “the first person (known) that introduced the Cow Pox by inoculation”, thus respecting the fact that this widely known immunity to smallpox may have inspired other anonymous people to the same deed. And at a recent talk about Jesty's newly discovered portrait given by William Schupbach of the Wellcome Library in London at a symposium on the history of medicine, one of the participants, he recounts, mentioned some evidence of similar practices on one of the Greek islands in the eighteenth century, but using goats instead of cows. Had this been fully documented and led anywhere, we could now be talking about caprination rather than vaccination, notes Schupbach.