Giants

In May 1796, Jenner, Edward not Bruce, a tinkerer of sorts, turned his attention to smallpox. For many years Jenner had heard stories that dairymaids were immune to smallpox because they had already contracted cowpox – a mild disease from cows that resembles smallpox – when they were children. (Fans of "John Adams" will recall the Adams family inoculated their children with smallpox years before during the Revolutionary War. The technique used was "variolation," which was the inoculation of a healthy person with the infectious material of another smallpox victim, usually one who was similarly inoculated. )

 

Jenner found a young dairymaid by the name of Sarah Nelms who had recently been infected with cowpox from Blossom, a cow whose hide still hangs on the wall of St. George’s medical hospital. Jenner extracted pus from one of Nelms’ pustules and inserted it in an 8-year old boy named James Phipps – the son of Jenner’s gardener.  

 

Phipps developed a mild fever, but no infection. Two months later, Jenner inoculated the boy with a fresh smallpox lesion and no disease developed. Jenner concluded that the experiment had been a success and he named the new procedure vaccination from the Latin word vacca meaning cow. 

So on the rumor of some mysterious crossover protection between cowpox and smallpox--this before the discovery of microorganisms and before the word "immunology"--Jenner purposely infects an innocent child with smallpox.

Who's the hero here?