[MajestyJo]

200 years ago smallpox killed many people.
It was a terrible disease and highly
contagious, killing 2,000 people every
year in London alone.

Edward Jenner was aware that people
who milked cows caught cowpox, a mild
disease. He discovered that no-one who
caught cowpox ever caught the deadly
smallpox.

On this day in 1796 Jenner inoculated an
8-year old boy with cowpox, which is not
a serious disease. 6 weeks later he injected
the boy with smallpox, but the boy
did not become ill. The much milder cowpox
had made him immune - he couldn’t
be hurt by the deadly smallpox.

Eventually Jenner’s work was appreciated.
Giving a mild form of a virus in
order to prevent a much worse illness,
became known as “vaccination”, after
the Latin word for “cowpox”, recognising
that that disease provided the clue
to making people immune - resistant -
to some serious viral infections.

Edward Jenner’s work helped save many
lives. 100 years later, Louis Pasteur did a
lot of work on producing vaccines to prevent
other serious illnesses. We now
know that an inoculation of a harmless
form of a virus causes the human body
to produce “antibodies” which stay in the
bloodstream, ready to fight against the
worst form of the virus if the person becomes
infected.

Viruses are so tiny that about 40,000 of
them, laid end-to-end, would measure a
millimetre. Such tiny things can destroy
life, just as small things each day - our
actions, our attitude - can take life away
from other people.

Let us pray:

Loving Lord,
I often see on the TV news
examples of inhumanity to others
- people being tortured, abused,
injured or killed.
I need to remind myself
that the commandment “do not kill”
also refers to my attitude
and what I do each day,
because it is in smaller ways
that I can destroy people
if I ignore them
or cut them off
or do them down.
Loving Lord, inspire me
to take care
of the smaller things of life
as well as the bigger issues. Amen.