Edward Jenner humans a cowpox vaccine against smallpox. For example, Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty successfully vaccinated and presumably induced immunity with cowpox in his wife and two children during a smallpox epidemic in 1774, but it was not until Jenner's work that the procedure became widely understood. Jenner may have been aware of Jesty's procedures and success. A similar observation had also been made in France by Jacques Antoine Rabaut-Pommier in 1780. Noting the common observation that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox, Jenner postulated that the pus in the blisters that milkmaids received from cowpox (a disease similar to smallpox, but
Statue of Edward Jenner, London Statue of Edward Jenner, London A statue of Edward Jenner, the physician, scientist and pioneer of the world's first vaccine, is located in Kensington Gardens in London. A work of the sculptor William Calder Marshall, the bronze was originally unveiled by Albert, Prince Consort in Trafalgar Square on 17 May 1858, before being moved to its present location in 1862. It is a Grade II listed building. The statue depicts Jenner in a seated position with one hand holding papers and is upon a plinth of Portland stone with Jenner's surname inscribed on a front panel of Aberdeen granite. At