Did Edward Jenner Think That Smallpox Came from Horse Grease?

Why do some people think that Edward Jenner, the inventor of the smallpox vaccine, believed that smallpox came from horse grease?

The usual suspects…

Did Edward Jenner Think That Smallpox Came from Horse Grease?

Surprisingly, there is a little bit of truth to this whole horse grease story!

“There is a disease to which the horse, from his state of domestication, is frequently subject. The farriers have called it the grease. It is an inflammation and swelling in the heel, from which issues matter possessing properties of a very peculiar kind, which seems capable of generating a disease in the human body (after it has undergone the modification which I shall presently speak of), which bears so strong a resemblance to the smallpox that I think it highly probable it may be the source of the disease.”

An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae: a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox

No, Edward Jenner didn’t think that smallpox came from horses.

“In this dairy country a great number of cows are kept, and the office of milking is performed indiscriminately by men and maid servants. One of the former having been appointed to apply dressings to the heels of a horse affected with the grease, and not paying due attention to cleanliness, incautiously bears his part in milking the cows, with some particles of the infectious matter adhering to his fingers. When this is the case, it commonly happens that a disease is communicated to the cows, and from the cows to the dairymaids, which spreads through the farm until the most of the cattle and domestics feel its unpleasant consequences. This disease has obtained the name of the cow-pox. It appears on the nipples of the cows in the form of irregular pustules.”

An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae: a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox

He thought that cowpox came from horses.

He was wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that cowpox was a thing and that creating a vaccine from cowpox material protected hundreds of millions of people from getting smallpox.

And Jenner made his vaccine from the “matter taken from the nipples of one of the infected cows,” not the grease from the heels of sick horses.

What’s truly amazing is that he was able to figure any of this out at all, not that he wasn’t able to figure out how cows got cowpox. After all, this was a century before scientists had discovered the germ theory of disease!

Folks should also understand that Jenner didn’t create a vaccine that he distributed in a vial and which you could go to a doctor and get a shot. More than anything, he discovered the technique of getting vaccinated against smallpox.

“On the eighth day matter was taken from the arm of this girl (Mary James) and inserted into the arms of her mother and brother (neither of whom had had either the smallpox or the cow-pox), the former about fifty years of age, the latter six.”

Similar to variolation, with his vaccine, Jenner used the cowpox material instead of material from smallpox sores and inoculated it on a patient’s arm.

And then to continue getting folks vaccinated and protected, you needed more of this cowpox material.

Myths and Facts about Smallpox

Roman Bystrianyk, an anti-vaccine influencer who is well known for creating propaganda using mortality charts that appear in the Suzanne Humphries‘ book Dissolving Illusions, has recently posted some other ‘facts’ about small pox (some of which are actually true!), including that:

• Edward Jenner, who we already know made the mistake of thinking horses were the source of cowpox, fed a horse beans, thinking it would somehow make his heels swell and have ‘grease.’
• Smallpox Cowpox – the idea that folks infected cows with smallpox to generate vaccine material, even though cows don’t get smallpox. While there do seem to be reports of this, they were likely simply infecting the cows with cowpox or another, similar infection that causes them to have sores. It wasn’t smallpox though. Only humans can get smallpox.
• Corpse Virus – using “material from the people who had died from smallpox” would go against all of the principles of Jenner’s smallpox vaccine! Remember, he is using cowpox material, not real smallpox virus. Doing this would basically be going back to the old practice of variolation, not Jenner’s vaccine.
• Arm-to-Arm Vaccination – arm to arm ‘vaccination’ was actually a thing, with some folks thinking it was a safer method than getting the traditional vaccine. It wasn’t until 1860 that “animal vaccines” were more commonly used to avoid contamination with other human diseases, like syphilis. With animal vaccines, smallpox vaccine was actually produced on vaccine farms on the skin of animals.
• Contaminated Vaccines – it shouldn’t be surprising that some smallpox vaccines were contaminated, as since anti-vax folks like to point out, this was before we had seen the benefits of improved sanitation and hygiene!
• Three Months of Age – younger infants were often vaccinated, as they were the most at risk if they got smallpox
• Retrovaccination – with animal vaccines came the idea that you could reinfect animals with cowpox from a person, thus allowing more sources to make vaccine material. Some also thought this increased the potency of the vaccine.
• Deadly Vaccination – “Despite vaccination being proclaimed perfectly safe, many people were injured or killed by the procedure.” – few, if any people say that vaccines are perfectly safe. Getting vaccinated is certainly safer than getting sick with diseases like smallpox though!
• Vaccination Failure – “Despite being proclaimed as an absolute protection from smallpox, vaccination has repeatedly failed since its beginning.” – again, this was before the modern age of vaccinology, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that there were some issues with contamination and vaccine failure. And few, if any people say that vaccines offer absolute protection.

‘Facts’ that are mostly straight out of an anti-vaccine book that was written nearly one hundred and forty years ago by William White.

What’s missing in Roman Bystrianyk’s revival of anti-vaccine myths from 1885?

“By the end of the year, smallpox had exhausted the supply of unvaccinated hosts and case numbers declined. The disease had taken nearly 6,000 lives in Quebec, including more than 3,000 in Montreal, and had disfigured another 13,000. Nine of ten victims were French Canadians, most of them children.”

The 1885 Montreal Smallpox Epidemic

That a lot of unvaccinated people, mostly children, were still dying with smallpox at the time!

Remember that in 1796, when Jenner started work on his smallpox vaccine, he described it as being “a disease which is every hour devouring its victims; a disease that has ever been considered as the severest scourge of the human race!”

Trying to re-frame the eradication of smallpox as being from just improved hygiene and sanitation is also pure propaganda.

And it is a shame that these folks try to justify their not wanting to get a COVID or flu shot by minimizing the deaths of all of those who died because they weren’t able to get vaccinated and protected against smallpox and other now vaccine preventable diseases.

Don’t believe their propaganda.

Don’t let them minimize the great work that Edward Jenner did!

More on the History of Smallpox Vaccines

• The Leicester Method and Smallpox Eradication
• How Misinformed and Irresponsible Parents Led to Outbreaks of Smallpox
• Vaccinated vs Unvaccinated – Smallpox Edition
• Did Edward Jenner’s Son Die from a Vaccine Reaction?
• The Hospital Rock Engravings of Farmington, Connecticut
• The Plano Smallpox Outbreak of 1895
• An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae: a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox
• The 1885 Montreal Smallpox Epidemic
• Quebec: Death from Distrust
• Edward Jenner, The Father of Vaccination
• Catching cowpox: the early spread of smallpox vaccination, 1798-1810
• Early smallpox vaccine manufacturing in the United States: Introduction of the “animal vaccine” in 1870, establishment of “vaccine farms”, and the beginnings of the vaccine industry

Last Updated on August 6, 2024