Despite evidence of vaccine research in ancient manuscripts, it has not been until the past few centuries that vaccines have truly flourished, undoubtedly revolutionizing health on a global scale. This glory, however was not an easy feat. Initially vaccines faced much criticism as people were clouded with fear of the unknown. Cartoonist James Gilray sketched a powerful cartoon in 1802 which portrayed this sentiment. His cartoon depicted a room full of mutilated people with snouts for noses, hooves instead of hands and their long and flaccid ears. In short, these people were turning into cows. Also illustrated in the center of Gilray’s cartoon was a doctor holding a syringe and gazing into the distance: Edward Jenner. People felt that vaccines were so absurd and dangerous that they were capable of transmute a human being. Jenner’s cowpox vaccine eventually permitted the elimination of smallpox off the face of the earth. In modern day, this ignorant fear seems rather amusing hence in most parts of the world, we have become accustomed to the method and reason of science. Although we do not possess the fear that a vaccine can turn people into cows, we do possess another fear: the fear of …show more content…
Jenner had to rely on the knowledge and awareness that milkmaids who had been infected with cowpox were not later affected by the community’s smallpox outbreaks. Being a man of science, he implemented methods of observation and experimentation. In 1796, as a derivation from the idea of variolation, Jenner extracted pus from a cowpox lesion on a milkmaid’s hand and inoculated an eight year old boy named James Phipps. Consequently, Phipps was unaffected by all subsequent smallpox exposures including when six week later, Jenner variolated Phipps’ arm with smallpox. Jenner had successfully devised a vaccine against smallpox stating “that the cow-pox protects the human constitution from the infection of smallpox” and laying the cornerstone for modern