James Phipps

[1] Jenner knew of a local belief that dairy workers who had contracted a relatively mild infection called cowpox were immune to smallpox, and successfully tested his theory on the 8-years-old James Phipps on 17 May 1796.

[2] Phipps was born in Berkeley parish in Gloucestershire to a poor landless labourer working as Jenner's gardener.

Jenner wrote: On the seventh day he complained of uneasiness in the axilla and on the ninth he became a little chilly, lost his appetite, and had a slight headache.

In 1791, Peter Plett from Kiel in the Duchy of Holstein (now Germany) inoculated three children,[10] and Benjamin Jesty of Yetminster in Dorset performed the procedure on three family members in 1774.

[11] However, Jenner included his description of the vaccination of Phipps and an illustration of the hand of Sarah Nelmes from which the material was taken in his Inquiry published in 1798.