Smallpox 1718. In 1721, Cotton Mather and colleagues provoked controversy in Boston by inoculating hundreds. In 1796, Edward Jenner, a doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, rural England, discovered that immunity to smallpox could be produced by inoculating a person with material from a cowpox lesion. Cowpox is a poxvirus in the same family as variola. Jenner called the material used for inoculation vaccine, from the root word "vacca", which is Latin for cow. The procedure was much safer than variolation, and did not involve a risk of smallpox transmission. Vaccination to prevent smallpox was soon practiced all over the world. During the
Robert Francis Jenner of 18. On 10 August 1824 Jenner married Elizabeth Lascelles (died 29 September 1850), eldest daughter of Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, Dean of Arches. She was his double first cousin. They had ten sons and five daughters. One of the daughters, Emma, wrote of her mother: "She always thought the year wasted if there was not a new baby born." Jenner resided in Wenvoe Castle, and was a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Glamorgan. In 1828 he was appointed High Sheriff of Glamorgan. Jenner was patron of St Mary's Church in the village of Jenner. Robert Francis Jenner