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Benjamin Jesty (c. 1736 – 16 April 1816) was a farmer at Yetminster in Dorset, England, notable for his early experiment in inducing immunity against smallpox using cowpox .
Jul 14, 2021 · Benjamin Jesty: The unsung hero of vaccination. 13 July 2021. Wellcome Collection. Edward Jenner is credited with developing the first vaccine. More than 250 years before the coronavirus...
Jul 14, 2021 · Jesty's story began in 1774, when the farmer from Yetminster deliberately infected his family with cowpox in a bid to protect them from the deadly smallpox virus. Smallpox was the leading cause...
Jesty was born in the village of Yetminster, near Sherborne in the north of the county. He became a dairy farmer and was a member of the Yetminster Vestry. His duties included the care of the poor. He would have known the local doctors and apothecaries personally and understood the potential hazards of variolation.
Dec 20, 2003 · Benjamin Jesty was the epitome of many farmers at the time of George III. He was intelligent, prosperous, and a pillar of the local community. These were revolutionary days in the approach to farming. The enclosure system had led to the new crops such as potatoes being grown on a commercial scale.
- Patrick J Pead
- 2003
Sep 29, 2020 · During a smallpox epidemic in the west of England in 1774, farmer Benjamin Jesty decided to try something. He scratched some pus from cowpox lesions on the udders of a cow into the skin of his...
Dec 23, 2006 · During 1774, in the face of a smallpox epidemic, he vaccinated his wife and two sons with cowpox lymph taken from lesions on the udder of an infected cow. Jesty devised and undertook his vaccination method 22 years before Edward Jenner, who is usually credited as the originator of the same practice.
