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
Thomas Jenner bench as a Baron of the Exchequer. With the majority of the judges, Jenner gave judgment in favour of the king's claim to the dispensing power which was raised in the case of Sir Edward Hales. In October 1687 Jenner was appointed one of the three royal commissioners to inquire into the appointment of a president of Magdalen College, Oxford; the other commissioners were Robert Wright and Thomas Cartwright. Jenner's diary of the proceedings survived in the library of Magdalen College. Cartwright sought to have him dismissed from the commission, finding him too moderate if outwardly overbearing to the fellows,