Edward Jenner is one of ten portraits specially selected to be part of the Close Encounters series on BBC Radio 4, made in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery. Scan the QR code in the picture or search 'Close Encounters' in the BBC Sounds App to hear why England's Chief Medical Officer, Sir Chris Whitty, chose this portrait.
In Jenner's time, smallpox was a dreaded disease causing disfiguremeni and many deaths. In 1796 he inoculatec a boy with the milder cowpox virus to see if it offered protection and discovered a revolutionary treatment for smallpox that he called 'vaccination.The public reaction to these findings was not immediatelv favourable. Gillrav's satire, below, plays on the concerns of a vocal anti-vaccination lobby. But in 1853 vaccination became compulsory in Britain, paving the way for the worldwide eradication of smallpox the following century