Edward Jenner : The Discoverer of Vaccination

Modern preventive medicine may be said to date from the introduction of inoculation for smallpox in the early part of the eighteenth century. It is much more profitable to dwell on the history of the second step in this direction, a far greater one, due to the genius of one man, Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination...

Jenner’s name has been so exclusively connected in the popular mind with the subject of vaccination, that his ability as a practitioner and his originality in many departments of medicine and surgery have been somewhat lost sight of. No doubt this was much aided by his own modesty; but in the treatment of many diseases his views, founded on the improved anatomy and physiology he had learned from Hunter and his own acute observation, were far in advance of his time.