Column: Dr's Casebook by Dr Keith Souter: Dr JENNER’S TEMPLE OF VACCINIA AND THE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY OF VACCINATION

The Chantry, a fine Queen Anne house immediately adjacent to Berkeley Castle was home to Dr Jenner (1749-1823) from 1785 until his death. It is now a wonderful museum and you very much get the sense that he was a man of many parts.

He was a naturalist who showed why animals hibernate, why birds migrate and why cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. He demonstrated that it was not the parent cuckoo that ejected the foster parents’ eggs and chicks from the nest, but the newly hatched cuckoo itself. Not only that, but he was a pioneer of ballooning. All of this while practising as a doctor from his house.

Dr Jenner’s discovery of vaccination has been one of the greatest advances in the history of medicine, but as is often the case it was built upon earlier empirical observations.

In fact, the Chinese had observed that survivors of smallpox did not suffer a second attack. In an attempt to produce a milder form of the illness, they developed a process called variolation in the 10th century AD.

It involved exposing healthy non-infected people to the scabs of people who had smallpox. These were either put under the skin or inhaled up the nose like snuff. Variolation certainly seemed to protect against smallpox by inducing a milder illness.

Even so, it could still kill and produce complications, although not as often as smallpox did. It was not until centuries later that merchants from Turkey brought the process to Europe.

In 1796, Dr Jenner was responsible for the next great step forward when he discovered vaccination. He had himself been inoculated by variolation as a child and suffered complications of the process for the rest of his life. He wondered if there could be a more effective way of giving protection against the condition.

He noticed that cow maids often contracted cowpox, a much milder condition than smallpox, but did not contract smallpox.

He researched and studied the disease and found that by inoculating pus from the lesions of cowpox onto a healthy person, it gave them protection against smallpox. From this, he established the principle of vaccination.

In the grounds of the house, his friend Rev Robert Ferryman built a summerhouse for him. Instead of using it for leisure, Jenner called it his ‘Temple of Vaccinia’ and used it as a surgery in which he vaccinated the poor of the district for free.

Vaccination has been one of the greatest discoveries of medicine and all of the vaccines that have come since Jenner’s day have prevented many illnesses and deaths. The development of the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic was a modern landmark in medical research. I really would encourage everyone to have whatever vaccines they are eligible for when they are offered by their medical advisers.