Edward Jenner (1749–1797)
The "father of vaccines" – cool story. Jenner figured out that getting people sick with cowpox (a mild disease) made them much less likely to be killed by smallpox (a serious disease). There was already a practice called variolation which was just straight-up infecting people with smallpox. And here is the origin of the name vaccine. Cowpox is translated into Latin as variolae vaccinae ("cow's smallpox"). So giving people cowpox is called "vaccination".
Now vaccination is the general practice of infecting people with a mild variant of a deadly disease. Often a mild variant doesn't exist, so we craft one in the lab.
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Created (7 years ago)