Portrait of Benjamin Jesty

Smallpox was once a common, epidemic disease that killed, blinded or disfigured its victims. In the 18th century its impact was reduced in Europe by the adoption of a Chinese practice called 'variolation', which involved the injection of smallpox fluid from an infected human into the blood of a healthy human. In the late 18th century, a safer modification of variolation, called 'vaccination', was introduced, in which the fluid was injected from an infected cow into a human being.
Benjamin Jesty is the first person on record to have carried out a vaccination. He performed this procedure on his wife and sons in Dorset in 1774, some twenty years before Edward Jenner carried out the same operation independently in Gloucestershire. Jesty was not a doctor; he was a farmer, but professional boundaries were not as strict in the 18th century as they are today, and medical procedures were carried out by vicars, housewives, and all sorts of people. Even so, Jesty was taking a risk by injecting material from a sick cow into the arms of his wife and sons. His innovation was recognized in his lifetime and this painting was commissioned by a group of London doctors in 1805 in honour of his achievement. The cow in the left background is an allusion to the fact that vaccine originally came from a cow.