Early modern Britain 1509–1745, Year 11: hospitals, John Hunter and vaccination (Health and the people option)

By gifts from wealthy individuals

HintThomas Guy was a rich merchant.

The whyMany hospitals had closed when the monasteries were dissolved. New general and specialist hospitals were founded in the 17th and 18th centuries, and more of them employed physicians and surgeons. Treatment was still usually based on the four humours.

By dissecting human and animal bodies himself and experimenting

HintHe trusted observation over books.

The whyHe set up his own anatomy school in London in 1764. He urged his pupils to test ideas for themselves, and he helped to turn surgery from a craft into a science.

They respected his expertise too much to question him

HintA great reputation can protect a wrong idea.

The whyHunter prepared nearly 14,000 anatomical specimens, which survive as the Hunterian Museum in London, and he made real discoveries by observation and experiment, for example about gunshot wounds. His case shows that an individual can hold medicine back as well as move it forward.

Edward Jenner

HintA country doctor from Gloucestershire.

The whyJenner studied surgery and anatomy under Hunter in London, and the two went on exchanging letters for years.

1745

HintThe year of the last Jacobite rising.

The whyIt became the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1800. The standing of surgeons rose as they began to study anatomy seriously, often at private schools such as the one run by John Hunter's brother William.

Inoculation (variolation)

HintLady Mary Wortley Montagu brought the method to England from Turkey.

The whyShe had her daughter treated in London in 1721. The method usually worked, but it was risky: a small number of people died of the smallpox they were given, and they could infect others.

1796

HintTwo years before he published his findings.

The whyHe took matter from a cowpox sore on the hand of a dairymaid, Sarah Nelmes, and scratched it into the boy's arm. When he later gave the boy smallpox matter, the boy did not fall ill. He published his findings in 1798.

Those who had caught cowpox did not catch smallpox

HintA mild illness from their work seemed to protect them.

The whyThe word 'vaccination' comes from the Latin name Jenner gave to cowpox, 'variolae vaccinae', meaning 'pustules of the cow'. It was safer than inoculation because cowpox is a mild disease in humans.

Explain why vaccination worked

HintGerm theory lay more than sixty years in the future.

The whyHe published his findings in 1798. Nobody yet understood why the vaccine worked, and opposition delayed its widespread use in Britain until later in the 19th century.

1853

HintThirty years after Jenner's death.

The whyThe government had begun to pay for free vaccination in 1840, when it also banned the older method of inoculation. Compulsion provoked an organised anti-vaccination movement.

Vaccination threatened their income

HintThink about what they stood to lose.

The whyInoculators and some churchmen were among the groups most opposed to vaccination at first. Opposition to a medical change can come from self-interest as well as from honest doubt about the evidence.