James Phipps (1788–1853), as an eight-year-old boy, was the first person given the cowpox vaccine by Edward Jenner.
Jenner had been variolated as a boy. He had suffered greatly from the ordeal but survived fully protected from smallpox. Jenner knew of a local belief that dairy workers who had contracted a relatively mild infection called cowpox were immune to smallpox. He decided to test the "theory" (though he was probably not the first to do). On 14 May 1796 he selected "a healthy boy, about eight years old for the purpose of inoculation for the Cow Pox". The boy was James Phipps who survived the experiment and suffered only a mild fever. On 1 July 1796, Jenner took some "smallpox matter" (probably infected pus) and repeatedly inoculated Phipp's arms with it. Phipps survived, and was subsequently inoculated with smallpox more than 20 times without succumbing to the disease. Vaccination – the word is derived from the Latin vacca meaning "cow" – had been invented.
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