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
Jenner, California build a house in what became known as Jenner Gulch, the site of the town. Stillwater Cove Regional Park, located north of Jenner, features picnic facilities, beach access, and a historic one-room schoolhouse. Jenner received media attention in 2004 after the bodies of Lindsay Cutshall and Jason S. Allen were discovered on Fish Head Beach just north of town. The incident became known as the Jenner, California double-murder of 2004. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP covers an area of 2.4 square miles (6.2 km²), 2.1 square miles (5.5 km²) of it land, and 0.3 square miles