James Phipps

James Phipps was the first person given the experimental cowpox vaccine by Edward Jenner. Jenner knew of a local belief that dairy workers who had contracted a relatively mild infection called cowpox were immune to smallpox and tested his theory on James Phipps.

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On this day in 1796, the physician Edward Jenner administered an inoculation derived from cowpox pus into the arm of 8-year-old James Phipps. Jenner's hypothesis that exposure to the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against smallpox helped develop the modern-day vaccine.