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The Jenner Museum
About Berkeley
A Walking Tour
St. Mary’s Church I
Despite all the Kings, Barons, Priests and Princes who dot the history of Berkeley, the person who definitely left the most lasting impression on the world was Edward Jenner.
In the 18th Century, smallpox was the deadliest and most feared disease in the world: the only treatment was by innocculating people with the smallpox virus, to make the patient immune. This often caused the patient to die, and also certainly spread the disease.
Jenner had noticed that people who had come into contact with cowpox, a disease that was irritating but harmless, appeared to be immune to smallpox.
After years of study, he took some matter from the cowpox blisters on the hands of one Sarah Nelmes, and put it into a cut on the arm of a young boy called James Phipps. After a few days James developed a fever and blisters, but they quickly receded: Jenner then tried to infect James with small-pox; without success. Vaccination (from the latin vacca: cow) had started and the defeat of smallpox had begun. The last recorded case was reported in Somalia in 1977.
The Jenner Museum, located in Jenner’s home, has a fascinating exhibition devoted not only to Jenner’s life and work, but to immunology as a whole. Visitors can try out the interactive CD-ROM based display, which enable them to fight disease within the human body!
After visiting the museum, walk through the gardens and see the “Temple of Vaccinia”, the small hut where Jenner treated his patients and then walk by the house donated to James Phipps by Jenner, as a “thank-you”.
Learn more about this remarkable man by visiting the museum’s own web site or the exhibition of historic papers relating to Jenner and the fight against smallpox at: the University of South Carolina.
Find out more details about how to order the special issue from Berkeley of the First Day Cover of the Edward Jenner commemorative stamp. Available 2nd March 1999
St. Mary’s Church II
The Jenner Museum
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Berkeley Anthology
Hogarth’s vision of the effects of vaccination
The “Temple of Vaccinia”