Seek treatment and immunizations for his disease. British physician Edward Jenner invented and popularized vaccination as a way to prevent the horrific disease smallpox. Today, thanks to Jenner, smallpox is truly eradicated from the face of the earth. At this point, it's easy to forget that it created a truly horrific scene of life-eating in earlier centuries. Smallpox was so contagious that most Europeans would indeed contract the disease at some point in their lives. It is so toxic that it kills between one and twenty percent of patients. Even if there are survivors, 10 to 15 percent of them will experience severe symptoms throughout their lives. Of course, smallpox was not limited to Europe; it was rampant in North America, India, China, and many other parts of the world, and in each region, children were the most common victims. This method was introduced to England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the early eighth century and was commonly used in England many years before Jenner. Jenner was actually vaccinated against smallpox at the age of eight. But this blunt approach to prevention had a serious flaw: A significant number of people infected with smallpox did not develop mild smallpox but developed malignant smallpox, ridding themselves of pimples. ? .In fact, fatal smallpox attacks occur about 2 percent of the time during vaccination periods. Therefore, the search for better prevention methods is clearly urgent. Jenner was born in 1749 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. At the age of twelve he became an apprentice doctor and later studied anatomy in a hospital. ?In 1792 he received his medical degree from St. Andrew's University. By the time he was in his mid-forties, he had become a prominent physician and surgeon in Gloucestershire. Jenner was familiar with the commonly accepted belief among dairy women and farmers in his area that cowpox was a mild disease of cows but that it could also be transmitted to humans and that people who got it would never get it again. Smallpox (cowpox itself is not dangerous to humans, although the symptoms are somewhat similar to a very mild form of smallpox). Jenner recognized that if the farmers were right, inoculating them with cowpox was a safe way to immunize them against smallpox. He studied the problem carefully, and in 1796 he was convinced that the farmers were indeed right, so he decided to test it directly. In May 1796, Jenner injected an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps, with a substance derived from cowpox pus obtained from dairy workers. As expected, the child contracted cowpox but recovered quickly. Jenner inoculated him against smallpox, and as expected, the child did not contract the disease. Jenner selflessly offered his vaccination method to the world with no intention of profiting from it. But in 1802, the British Parliament thanked Jenner by awarding him a bonus of ￡10,000, followed a few years later by an additional ￡20,000. He became a world celebrity and received many honors and awards. Jenner is married and has three children. ?He died in his hometown of Berkeley in early 1823 at the age of 73. ? [