/oss/taxonomy/term/1995/all en /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-history/white-lie-heart-vaccine-history <p>Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Dr. Edward Jenner invented vaccines because of an observation he and he alone made. You see, milkmaids were renowned for their beauty. At a time when smallpox was endemic and was scarring the faces of the people who survived it, Jenner noticed that milkmaids would always escape from this dermatological blight. Why was that?</p> Fri, 09 Jun 2023 13:00:00 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9539 at /oss /oss/article/health-history/death-smallpox <p>Edward Jenner, an English country doctor is usually credited with introducing the idea of vaccination because of his landmark publication in 1798 in which he described inoculating 23 people with pus from smallpox pustules. Normally they would have been expected to come down with the disease. But none did!  Why? Because Jenner had previously exposed them to a disease that was well-known among milkmaids, known as cowpox. Somehow this exposure conferred immunity to the far more serious smallpox.</p> Tue, 05 May 2015 07:46:18 +0000 Joe Schwarcz 2255 at /oss