With the frenzy that everyone has been thrown into as a result of a particular virus, you would easily be led to believe that disease has never hit Gloucestershire before.

COVID-19 does pose a real threat to the vulnerable members of our society and to our routines, and although self-isolation can sound boring and lonely, we do not have to look far when it comes to inspiration during these turbulent times.

Edward Jenner, also known as The Father of Immunology, was born in Berkeley, and it was in this Gloucestershire town that he developed the vaccine against smallpox in 1796.

Smallpox was a major infectious disease in Jenners time, and killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans in the 18th century - it caused pustules all over the victims body.

Jenner noticed that milkmaids who contracted cowpox, caused by blistering on cows udders, did not contract smallpox.

To test out his theory that those who contract cowpox are immune to smallpox, he scraped some fluid from a cowpox blister onto the cut of James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy whose father was Jenners gardener.

A blister formed on James cut, but he recovered quickly. After he had recovered, Jenner inoculated James again, but with smallpox fluid. His vaccine was successful.

Although the story of Edward Jenners smallpox discovery is one most of us learnt in school, little is widely known about the rest of his life.

Here are seven things you may not have known about the Berkeley physician.

On May 17, 1749, Edward Anthony Jenner was born to Rev Stephen Jenner and Sarah Jenner, as the eighth of their nine children.

Sadly, in 1754, both of Jenners parents passed away, and he was raised by the rest of his siblings.

After the Montgolfier brothers pioneering flights in France and similar flights in England, Jenner became fascinated by balloons.

On September 2, 1784, at 2pm, he released a hot air balloon from the courtyard of Berkeley Castle, using the expertise of someone who had launched one prior to him.

The balloon landed into Kingscote Park, in Kingscote, near Tetbury, which was owned by Anthony Kingscote at the time. It is believed that Jenner met his daughter, Catherine Kingscote, on this day.

Jenner and Catherine married in March 1788.

After Jenners balloon was relaunched from Kingscote Park, it drifted north along the hills for another fourteen miles, before coming down on the escarpment at Birdlip.

The name of the famous pub on the A417 roundabout is said to commemorate Jenners balloon flight, which ended close to the pub.

When Jenner returned to Berkeley after university, he started practising as a local doctor and surgeon.

He was known to be very dedicated to his patients, as he would travel long distances in bad weather to visit them at home.

In one instance, he nearly died when he travelled ten miles from home during a blizzard to visit a patient in Kingscote.

Although he established medical practices in Cheltenham and London later in his career, Berkeley always remained his priority.

Five investigators in England and Germany successfully tested a cowpox vaccine against smallpox more than two decades before Jenner tested his vaccination.

Furthermore, Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty successfully vaccinated his wife and children during an epidemic in 1774.

However, Edward Jenner was the first of them all to openly conduct the experiment and demonstrate that people inoculated with cowpox were immune to smallpox as a result.

Jenner also proved that protective cowpox pus could be effectively inoculated from person to person, not just directly from cattle.

It was because of his efforts that the cowpox vaccine was adopted globally. So although he was not the first person to test it, Jenner is credited with discovering the cowpox vaccine.

Jenner had an aptitude for zoology and it was him who discovered that it was not adult cuckoos who were responsible for kicking the occupants out of the nests they had taken over, but their newborn chicks.

Jenner is also credited with furthering the understanding of angina pectoris.

In 1853, vaccination with cowpox was made free and mandatory.

The World Health Organisation launched its campaign to eradicate smallpox worldwide in 1967, and in 1980 it finally declared: Smallpox is dead!

The disease that had been most feared since ancient times had been eradicated, and it is estimated that Jenners work has saved more lives than the work of any other human.

Excerpt from:
Seven facts about Gloucestershires Father of Immunology Edward Jenner - Gloucestershire Live