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
Frank Jenner were willing to engage in conversation with him, he would invite them either to his home or to a local church. The question became known as "the Frank Jenner question". Jenner was most active in evangelism during World War II. On Saturday nights during the war, Jenner would invite groups of sailors to his home for a service consisting of some hymns and a short sermon. One of the people to whom Jenner posed his question was Noel Stanton, a man from Bedfordshire, England, who was serving in Sydney with the Royal Navy at the time. Stanton became preoccupied with