Letter from Thomas Jefferson

3rd president of the United States: 1801-1809

Letter To Dr. Edward Jenner On his Discovery of the Small 
 Pox Vaccine - Monticello, May 14, 1806

        _To Dr. Edward Jenner_
        _Monticello, May 14, 1806_


        SIR, -- I have received a copy of the evidence at large
respecting the discovery of the vaccine inoculation which you have
been pleased to send me, and for which I return you my thanks.
Having been among the early converts, in this part of the globe, to
its efficiency, I took an early part in recommending it to my
countrymen.  I avail myself of this occasion of rendering you a
portion of the tribute of gratitude due to you from the whole human
family.  Medicine has never before produced any single improvement of
such utility.  Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was
a beautiful addition to our knowledge of the animal economy, but on a
review of the practice of medicine before and since that epoch, I do
not see any great amelioration which has been derived from that
discovery.  You have erased from the calendar of human afflictions
one of its greatest.  Yours is the comfortable reflection that
mankind can never forget that you have lived.  Future nations will
know by history only that the loathsome small-pox has existed and by
you has been extirpated.

        Accept my fervent wishes for your health and happiness and
assurances of the greatest respect and consideration.

Sequence of Events
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	The Italian Gardens The Italian Gardens

The Italian Fountains - statue of Dr Edward Jenner is visible Italian Fountains and statue of Dr Edward Jenner

Italian Fountains Statue of Dr Edward Jenner

Statue of Dr Edward Jenner Statue of Dr Edward Jenner

Plaque to Dr Edward Jenner Edward Jenner MD FRS 1749 - 1823 Country Doctor Who Benefited Mankind In Jenner's time smallpox was a dreaded disease worldwide and caused many deaths particularly on children. Survivors were left badly scarred and often blinded or deformed. In 1796 Jenner vaccinated James Phipps with cowpox and showed that the boy was then immune to smallpox. He predicted the worldwide erradication of smallpox. This was achieved in 1980. Jenner was born, practiced and died in Berkeley Gloucestershire and studied at St. George's Hospital, London. This statue by William Calder Marshall, RA was inaugurated by Prince Albert, the Prince Consort and was the first to be errected in Kensington Gardens in 1862. The cost was met by international subscription. This plaque was funded and placed here by the Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, The Jenner Educational Trust and St. George Hospital Medical School in 1996 the Bicentennial Anniversary of Jenner's discovery. Plaque to Dr Edward Jenner

Plaque to Dr Edward Jenner The Italian Fountains

The Italian Fountains Statue of Dr Edward Jenner

You are here in Kensington Gardens Exit from Kensington Gardens to Lancaster Gate Tube Station

Lancaster Gate Tube Station Lancaster Gate Tube Station

• The Three Original Publications On Vaccination Against Smallpox by Edward Jenner - Harvard Classics, Vol. 38, Part 4
  • At http://www.bartleby.com/38/4/1.html

  • "Jenner’s first paper on his discovery was never printed; but in 1798 appeared the first of the following treatises. Its reception by the medical profession was highly discouraging; but progress began when Cline, the surgeon of St. Thomas’s Hospital, used the treatment with success. Jenner continued his investigations, publishing his results from time to time, and gradually gaining recognition; though opposition to his theory and practise was at first vehement, and has never entirely disappeared. In 1802, Parliament voted him £10,000, and in 1806, £20,000, in recognition of the value of his services, and the sacrifices they had entailed. As early as 1807, Bavaria made vaccination compulsory; and since that date most of the European governments have officially encouraged or compelled the practise; and smallpox has ceased to be the almost universal scourge it was before Jenner’s discovery."

  • I. An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, Or Cow-Pox. 1798
  • II. Further Observations on the Variolæ Vaccinæ, or Cow-Pox. 1799
  • III. A Continuation of Facts and Observations Relative to the Variolæ Vaccinæ, or Cow-Pox. 1800

• An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, (Jenner - 1798)
  • At http://www.foundersofscience.net/jenner.htm

  • "Three years after publication of "Inquiry", the practice of smallpox vaccination had begun to spread throughout the world. Jenner reported that by 1801 over 100,000 persons in England had been vaccinated. Vaccination had been introduced into many countries including several British possessions, France, Spain, the United States and Canada.

    Despite these successes, all was not smooth sailing for vaccination. There were many who doubted the unique ability of cowpox to prevent smallpox and opposed its practice, suggesting, rather, that the treatment was no more than a variation of variolation. This idea was fortified by events occurring in the Smallpox and Inoculation Hospitals in London, an institution initially dedicated to variolation, that now began to practice vaccination under the direction of Drs. Woodville and Pearson. Patients treated with cowpox vaccines would develop numerous pustules, more like smallpox sores, and quite unlike the single inoculation pustule that Jenner reported. Such pustules, we now believe, were due to contamination of the vaccines with smallpox virus that infested the smallpox institution. A brisk debate between Woodville on one side and Jenner on the other caused some in the medical profession to question Jenner's discovery.

    Contributing to this questioning of the effectiveness of vaccination was the apparent use by some practitioners of exudates from unrelated infections of a cow's udder that they assumed were cowpox (called by Jenner Spurious Cowpox). Operators using such exudates would report failureto protect against smallpox which they then attributed to failure of cowpox itself. Even when the source of the vaccine was from true cowpox exudates, some reported failures could be attributed to degradation of the vaccine through improper storage and bacterial decomposition.

    Finally there were occasional reports of individuals who had earlier been infected with cowpox who years later developed smallpox, reports directly contradictory to Jenner's hypothesis of permanent immunity. Not known at that time by Jenner or his supporters is that vaccination against smallpox is not permanent but must be reinforced every 5 to 10 years. In addition, because of the existence of spurious cowpox, some who believed that they had been infected by cowpox might not have been.

    In an effort to clarify several of these issues, Jenner published in 1801 the fourth of this pamphlets on smallpox vaccination: "The Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation". This pamphlet is reproduced here."

• Edward Jenner and the Discovery of Vaccination
  • At http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/nathist/jenner.html

  • "Edward Jenner (1749-1823), after training in London and a period as an army surgeon, spent his whole career as a country doctor in his native county of Gloucestershire in the West of England. His research was based on careful case-studies and clinical observation more than a hundred years before scientists could explain the viruses themselves. So successful did his innovation prove that by 1840 the British government had banned alternative preventive treatments against smallpox. "Vaccination," the word Jenner invented for his treatment (from the Latin vacca, a cow), was adopted by Pasteur for immunization against any disease.

    In the eighteenth century, before Jenner, smallpox was a killer disease, as widespread as cancer or heart disease in the twentieth century but with the difference that the majority of its victims were infants and young children. In 1980, as a result of Jenner's discovery, the World Health Assembly officially declared "the world and its peoples" free from endemic smallpox."