The story of Benjamin Jetsy and Cowpox

Who discovered vaccination against Small Pox ?

We all remember that in the year 1796, Edward Jenner, a British Physician had inoculated the son of his Gardener with the cow pox germ.Jenner had named this process as vaccination.

In latin, Cow is known as Vacca.

Here is the original story.

Small pox was rampant in Britain. Three out of every 10 persons affected would die. But the rest 7 would suffer from permanent defects such as blindness or pock marks on face. No one was immune.

Who will attend patients afflicted by such morbidity ? It was folk-knowledge that milk maids are immune to the scourge. Accordingly, there was a high demand for milkmaids to attend wealthy sufferers.

Benjamin  Jetsy, a rich farmer had a milkmaid who would often take leave to attend such cases. Both Jetsy and two of his farm hands had already suffered from cow pox. In 1774, Jesty decided to try to give his wife Elizabeth and two eldest sons immunity by infecting them with cowpox. He took his family to a farm and using a darning needle, transferred pustular material from the cow by scratching their arms.

This was sheer witch craft, everyone thought.

Jesty’s experiment was met with hostility by his neighbours. Soon Jetsy was driven out of his village on the charges of sorcery. People were sure that all the three would develop horns and hooves.

But to their surprise, no such things happened. And year after year, the Jetsy family remained healthy. 

20 years after, British physician Edward Jenner repeated the experiment successfully and prepared a detailed case record of 22 persons and presented it to Royal medical society.

Rest is history. We still believe that the beautiful milkmaid of Edward Jenner provided the impetus to Jenner to think differently.

After all the image of a Physician of stature and a beautiful woman supersedes the image of a country farmer who had been ostracised from his village.

In 1805, the Royal Medical society interviewed Jetsy and were convinced. Even Jesty’s oldest son (by then 28 years old) had to be inoculated with smallpox again to prove that he still had immunity. 

This is world’s first vaccine challenge test.

Even today,  the plaque on the headstone of Benjamin Jetsy’s grave reads,

“… first Person (known) that Introduced the Cow Pox by Inoculation, and who from his great strength of mind made the Experiment from the (Cow) on his Wife and two Sons in the Year 1774.”