Edward Jenner

The cow-pox protects the human constitution from the infection of smallpox.

While the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities, blended with the fond hope of enjoying independence and domestic peace and happiness, was often so excessive that, in pursuing my favourite subject among the meadows, I have sometimes found myself in a kind of reverie.

I hope that some day the practice of producing cowpox in human beings will spread over the world - when that day comes, there will be no more smallpox.

The annihilation of the smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice.

It now becomes too manifest to admit of controversy, that the annihilation of the Small Pox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice.

I am not surprised that men are not grateful to me; but I wonder that they are not grateful to God for the good which He has made me the instrument of conveying to my fellow creatures.

The joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities was often excessive.

My opinion is that the smallpox is a disease which will, in time, be eradicated from the earth by the practice of vaccination.

The vaccine virus, like a subtle alchemist, extracts from the human body its most virulent poison, and leaves it in a state of security.

The source of my vaccine was a disease of the cow, which was communicated to the human subject, and there produced a disease which protected the constitution from the smallpox.

I trust the faculty will not think I am arrogating too much when I say, that the practice of vaccination will finally annihilate the smallpox.

The practice of vaccination is a blessing to mankind, and I trust it will be universally adopted.

The smallpox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover.

In the first instance, I selected a healthy boy, about eight years old, for the purpose of inoculation for the Cow Pox.

The more deeply I penetrate into the nature of the vaccine disease, the more I am convinced of its specific character, and of its power to secure the constitution from smallpox.

Science is not a profession for the ambitious or the avaricious; there is no wealth to be acquired by it.

I have never yet seen a single instance of a person who had the cowpox that was susceptible of the smallpox.

The vaccine pustule, from its first appearance to its last stage, is so perfectly characteristic, that it cannot be mistaken by any person who has once paid attention to it.

The security which vaccination affords is not temporary but permanent.

It is too manifest to require proof that the vaccine disease is a complete and perfect security against the smallpox.