Text В. Edward Jenner

Edward ['edwod] Jenner ['d^eno] was born in 1749. He was an English physician, the discoverer of vaccination. Jenner studied medicine in London. He began practice in 1773 when he was twenty-four years old.

Edward Jenner liked to observe and investigate ever since he was a boy. His persistent scientific work resulted in,-the.discovery of vaccination against smallpox. For many years every infant when it was about a year old was vaccinated against this disease. The vaccination was effective for a prolonged period, of time. Now vaccination against smallpox is not carried out because this disease has been stamped out (искоренять) in our country.

In Jenner's days one out of every five persons in London carried the marks of this disease on his face. But there were few people who recovered from the disease, because in the 18th century smallpox was one of the main causes of death.

The disease had been common for centuries in many countries of Asia. The Turks (турки) had discovered that a person could be prevented from a serious attack of smallpox by being infected with a mild form of the disease.

One day Jenner heard a woman say: "I cannot catch smallpox, I've had the cowpox (телячья оспа)." That moment led to Jenner's continuous investigations and experiments.

The first child whom Jenner introduced the substance from cowpox vesicles ['vesiklz] (пузырек) obtained from the wound of a diseased woman was Jimmy Phipps. It was in 1796. For the following two years Jenner continued his experiments. In 1798 he published the report on his discovery. He called his new method of preventing smallpox "vaccination", from the Latin word vacca, that is "a COW".

At first people paid no attention to his discovery. One doctor even said that vaccination might cause people to develop cow's faces.

But very soon there was no part of the world that had not taken up vaccination. Thousands of people were given Vaccination and smallpox began to disappear as if by magic.