Nina's Clinic

The year is 1796. You are Edward Jenner, a country doctor in the village of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. Smallpox is the most feared disease in the world. It kills about 30% of those who catch it — roughly 400,000 Europeans die from it every year. Survivors are often left blind or covered in deep scars. It spreads through the air and through contact with infected sores. Nobody is safe. There is one way to protect yourself: a dangerous procedure called "variolation." A doctor deliberately infects you with a small amount of smallpox material from a mild case. If you're lucky, you get a mild infection and become protected. But 2-3% of people who undergo variolation die from it, and they can spread smallpox to others during their infection. You've been a country doctor for 20 years, and you've noticed something remarkable. The young women who milk cows — milkmaids — almost never get smallpox. Many have had a mild disease called cowpox, caught from infected cows. Cowpox causes a few blisters on the hands but is otherwise harmless. Could cowpox somehow protect against smallpox?