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
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