Benjamin Jesty

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Benjamin Jesty (1805). A portrait by Michael William Sharp

Benjamin Jesty (* around 1736 in Yetminster , Dorset , † April 16, 1816 in Worth Matravers ) was an English farmer and pioneer in the field of vaccination .

Jesty observed that his milkmaids who had cowpox - a comparatively harmless viral infection - did not develop smallpox later . In 1774 he infected his wife and two sons with cowpox a cow , so as to protect his family against smallpox. This makes him the first known person to have successfully introduced the principle of vaccination, although he had never originally made this public.

Life

On August 19, 1736, Jesty was baptized as the youngest son of the butcher Robert Jesty. In 1770 he married Elisabeth Notley (1740-1824) in Longburton . With her, Jesty had four sons and three daughters. The family lived on Upbury Farm in Yetminster.

vaccination

Jesty was a successful farmer. He first lived in Yetminster and later moved to Downshay . In 1774 smallpox broke out in the Downshay area. Ann Notley and Mary Read were two of Jesty's milkmaids. A brother and a nephew of the two suffered from smallpox. Although both of them visited their relatives, neither contracted smallpox. Both had previously had cowpox.

Jesty knew that a neighboring farmer (Mr. Elford in Chittenhall ) had several cows that were infected with cowpox. He took his wife and two of his sons, Robert (two years old) and Benjamin (three years old), to his neighbor's house. Using a knitting needle from his wife, he took material from an infected cow from a smallpox pustule and inoculated it in each of his sons' upper arms . He inoculated it on his wife's forearm. Jesty did not treat himself as he had previously had cowpox. He was convinced that this past illness would protect him sufficiently. The arms of his two sons showed local reactions. A considerable, probably bacterial inflammatory reaction set in on his wife's arm , so that she became seriously ill. However, thanks to two doctors called in from Cerne Abbas (Mr. Trowbridge and Mr. Meech), she quickly recovered from the disease.

Thanks to the effectiveness of the vaccinations, his sons and his wife did not fall ill when a new smallpox epidemic occurred. His vaccinated sons could still be inoculated with smallpox, for example in 1789 (Robert and Benjamin) or 1805 (Robert).

Because of the strong inflammatory reaction on his wife's arm, which had to be treated medically, and the then new method of using material from animals for vaccination, Jesty earned a lot of ridicule from his neighbors. In addition, Jesty was physically and verbally reviled, so he and his family eventually moved to Worth Matravers in 1797 . Jesty never made this method public or repeated it on any of his other children. Although Jesty's vaccinations were reported in the south of England, they remained anecdotal and long went unnoticed in the medical community of the time.

About 30 years later the vaccination was publicly distributed by Edward Jenner , but there is no clear evidence that Jenner knew about Jesty's experiment. Based on research by the clergyman Andrew Bell, a pastor from Swanage , Jesty was introduced to the Original Vaccine Pock Institute and a member of parliament, George Rose, in a 1803 document as the first vaccinee. Bell himself was an avid vaccinator. In 1805 Jesty was invited to the "Original Vaccine Pock Institute" in London to report to a commission of inquiry about his 1774 vaccinations. The trip was organized by George Pearson - a competitor of Jenner's - likely as a political affront to the Royal Jennerian Society. Jesty's son Robert accompanied him on his trip and was re-inoculated to demonstrate his immunity to smallpox. The results were published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal . A portrait of Jesty was commissioned, completed by Michael William Sharp , and hung in the institute. Jesty was also of the opinion to Bell that this method of vaccination did not endanger a person:

"There is little risk in introducing into the human constitution matter from the cow as we already without danger eat the flesh and blood, drink the milk and cover ourselves with the skin of this innocuous animal."

- Benjamin Jesty
Gravestones Benjamin and Elizabeth Jesty, St. Nicholas of Myra Cemetery at Worth Matravers

Jesty was generally not given the monetary reward Jenner had received. From the Original Vaccine Pock Institute he received lancets decorated with gold , a ceremonial certificate praising him as the inventor of vaccination, and 15 guinea pigs as allowance for the trip. After Jesty's death, his widow made sure that his headstone featured his prominent role as the first person to be vaccinated. When Jesty's wife died in 1824 at the age of 84, she was buried next to her husband.

“He was born at Yetminster in this County, and was an upright and honest Man: particularly noted for having been the first Person (known) that introduced the Cowpox by Inoculation, and who from his great strength of mind made the Experiment from the ( Cow) on his Wife and two Sons in the year of 1774 ”

- Jesty's epitaph

literature

Newer literature

  • DR Hopkins: The greatest killer: smallpox in history. The University of Chicago Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-226-35168-1 , p. 80.
  • PC Plett: Peter Plett and the rest of the cowpox vaccinators before Edward Jenner. In: Sudhoffs Archive , Journal for the History of Science, Volume 90, Issue 2, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2006, pp. 219–232. ( ISSN  0039-4564 )
  • PJ Pead: Benjamin Jesty: new light in the dawn of vaccination. In: The Lancet 362, 2003, pp. 2104-2109. PMID 14697816
  • R. Horton: Myths in medicine. Jenner did not discover vaccination. In: BMJ (Clinical research ed.). Volume 310, number 6971, January 1995, p. 62, PMID 7726920 , PMC 2548470 (free full text).
  • CP Gross and KA Sepkowitz: The myth of the medical breakthrough: smallpox, vaccination, and Jenner reconsidered. In: Int J Infect Dis 3, 1998, pp. 54-60. PMID 9831677

Contemporary

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Patrick J. Pead: Vaccination's Forgotten Origins . In: Pediatrics . tape 139 , no. 4 , doi : 10.1542 / peds.2016-2833 , PMID 28270548 .
  2. ^ JF Hammarsten, W. Tattersall, JE Hammarsten: Who discovered smallpox vaccination? Edward Jenner or Benjamin Jesty? In: Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association. Volume 90, 1979, pp. 44-55, PMID 390826 , PMC 2279376 (free full text) (review).
  3. ^ FD Hart: Benjamin Jesty, farmer vaccinator. In: Br J Clin Pract 42, 1988, pp. 33-34. PMID 3058191
  4. ↑ a b c Stanley A. Plotkin et al .: Plotkin's Vaccines . 7th edition. Elsevier, Philadelphia 2017, ISBN 978-0-323-35761-6 , pp. 2 ( elsevier.com ).
  5. ↑ a b c d e Patrick J. Pead: Benjamin Jesty: new light in the dawn of vaccination . In: Lancet (London, England) . tape 362 , no. 9401 , December 20, 2003, p. 2104-2109 , doi : 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (03) 15111-2 , PMID 14697816 .
  6. ^ A b c Robert Jesty, Gareth Williams: Who invented vaccination? - Malta Medical Journal Volume 23 (2011); Issue 2. Retrieved September 22, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Gareth Williams: Angel of Death . The Story of Smallpox. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-27471-6 , pp. 166 .
personal data
SURNAME Jesty, Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English farmer and vaccination pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH 1736
PLACE OF BIRTH Yetminster , Dorset
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1816
Place of death Worth Matravers