Hapy Birthday, Edward

On this day in 1749 Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucester- shire, England. He was a surgeon, and he's best known for performing the world's first successful vaccination, inoculating (as shown in this painting by Robert Thom) a young boy with cowpox to protect him from the scourge of smallpox - 25% of adults and 30% of children who caught it died, over 60 million in the 18th century alone. Jenner recognized that people who'd gotten cowpox (usually dairymaids) didn't catch smallpox, so he tested his theory with vaccination. And was right.