Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Marchant, and thank you for joining me for today's history lesson.

I'll be guiding you through all of our resources today, and my top priority is to make sure that, by the end of our lesson, you are able to successfully meet our learning objective.

Welcome to today's lesson, which is part of our Edexcel unit on medicine in Britain, and our AQA unit on health and the people.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to evaluate the significance of Jenner's vaccine for smallpox.

There are three keywords which will help us navigate our way through today's lesson.

Those are immunity, scientific method, and compulsory.

Immunity is a state of being unable to catch a specific disease.

The scientific method is an approach to testing and gaining knowledge based on observation and experimentation.

And if something is compulsory, then it's a thing which people must do because of a rule or law.

Today's lesson will be split into free parts, and we'll begin by focusing on smallpox and inoculation.

Smallpox is an infectious viral disease.

In the 18th century, smallpox was amongst the deadliest diseases in Britain and Europe.

Smallpox was incredibly deadly in 18th-century Britain.

Roughly one in five people who infected by the disease died.

Smallpox was the leading killer of children, and thousands of adults died from the disease too.

Many victims of smallpox were poor, but the most powerful people in the country could be at risk as well.

For instance, in 1694, Queen Mary II died after catching smallpox.

Even those who survived smallpox could continue to live with its impacts.

Many survivors were left with significant scarring on their skin, and some victims were even left blind by the disease.

So thinking about what we've just heard, how many people died after being infected with smallpox in the 18th century? Was it one in three, one in five, or one in ten? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said the correct answer was B.

One in five people died after being infected with smallpox in the 18th century.

There was no cure to treat smallpox in the 18th century, but there was some progress in the prevention of the disease.

In 1721, Lady Mary Montagu began promoting inoculation in Britain, a practise she had first observed whilst living outside of Europe.

Inoculation involved introducing puss from a smallpox victim to a scratch or cut made on the arm or leg of an uninfected person.

The puss was usually taken from people suffering from mild cases of smallpox, and the intention was that the inoculated patient, in other words, the person who was receiving this puss, would develop a mild case of smallpox themselves, which they could then recover from.

This recovery would allow the inoculated patient to develop lifelong immunity from smallpox.

Over the course of the 18th century, inoculation became increasingly popular in Britain.

In part, this was because it received royal approval.

For instance, King George II and his wife, Queen Charlotte, had all 15 of their children inoculated.

This example encouraged others to trust the procedure.

And studies at the time clearly showed that inoculation was less deadly than catching smallpox naturally.

Nevertheless, there were issues with inoculation.

When the procedure was carried out, some patients failed to gain lifetime immunity from smallpox, whilst others developed serious cases of smallpox and died.

Furthermore, after being inoculated, patients were infectious and could spread smallpox to others for a period of time.

This meant that inoculated patients had to be carefully isolated, which was both expensive and time-consuming.

So let's make sure that everything we've just heard is secure in our minds.

I want you to write the missing keyword from the following sentence.

Inoculation was intended to give people blank from smallpox.

So what's the missing word? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

Okay, well then to everybody who said the missing word was immunity.

Inoculation was intended to give people immunity from smallpox.

And let's try another question.

How did King George III and Queen Charlotte help to popularise inoculation? Was it that they had all 15 of their children inoculated, that they had opponents of inoculation imprisoned, or that they gave rewards to anyone who was inoculated? Pause the video here and press play when you are ready to see the right answer.

Now, okay, well then to everybody who said the correct answer was A, King George III and Queen Charlotte helped to popularise inoculation by having all 15 of their children inoculated.

Their powerful and well-known example encouraged others to do likewise.

And now I want you to identify two problems associated with inoculation from the following options, that most people refuse to trust the procedure, that only adults could be inoculated, that patients were temporarily infectious with smallpox, or that some patients caught full-blown smallpox and died.

Remember, you are identifying two problems from those options.

So pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answers.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that one of the problems associated with inoculation was that patients were temporarily infectious with smallpox.

This meant that they had to be isolated, which was both time-consuming and expensive.

And another problem with inoculation was that some patients caught full=blown smallpox and died.

Whilst inoculation was still far safer than catching smallpox naturally, this risk did still concern some doctors and ordinary people.

So we are now in a good position to put all of our knowledge about smallpox and inoculation into practise.

I want you to complete the table to summarise your knowledge of inoculation.

In the table, you need to identify the purpose of inoculation, some successes of inoculation, and some limitations of inoculation.

So pause the video here and press play when you're ready to reflect on your responses.

Okay, well done for all of your effort on that task.

So I asked you to complete the table to summarise your knowledge of inoculation.

Your answers may have included, for the purpose of inoculation, it was to give patients lifelong immunity against smallpox.

For its successes, you may have said that it was supported by the British royal family, who had all 15 of the royal children inoculated, and that it was less deadly than catching natural smallpox.

But for the limitations you may have put, it did not always work for lifelong immunity, and some patients died.

And that patients were temporarily infectious and had to be isolated, which was costly and time-consuming.

So really well done if your own responses look something like those answers we've just seen.

So now we're ready to move on to the second part of our lesson for today where we are going to think about Edward Jenner and vaccination.

Edward Jenner was a British doctor.

In the late 18th century, Jenner discovered a new method for preventing smallpox.

This method became known as vaccination.

So thinking about what we've just heard, who discovered the vaccination for smallpox? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well then to everybody who said that, Edward Jenner discovered the vaccination for smallpox.

Edward Jenner's medical education, which had included some time learning under figures, such as John Hunter, had emphasised the importance of the scientific method.

Indeed, as a student, Jenner was encouraged to make observations and conduct experiments in order to test and verify medical ideas.

Once he had completed his training, Jenner practised inoculation but was particularly interested in why it didn't always work.

It came to Jenner's attention that farmers and milkmaids who caught a disease called cowpox had no reaction to inoculation.

Jenner suspected that cowpox helped people gain immunity against smallpox, and began to conduct experiments to confirm his theory.

In 1796, Jenner deliberately infected a young boy with puss from a milkmaid suffering from cowpox.

Jenner later gave the same boy puss from a smallpox victim.

However, the boy had no reaction at all.

Clearly he had gained immunity against smallpox.

Whilst this experiment seemed to confirm Jenner's theory, the doctor repeated his experiment 23 times to be sure of his findings.

All of Jenner's experiments produced the same results, proving that cowpox gave people immunity against smallpox.

Jenner called his procedure vaccination after a Latin word for cow, vacca.

So let's check our knowledge of everything we've just heard.

I want you to write the two missing words from the following sentence.

Vaccination involved infecting people with blank in order to help them develop immunity against blank.

So what should those two missing words be? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answers.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the first missing word should be cowpox, and that the second missing word should have been smallpox.

Vaccination involved infecting people with cowpox in order to help them develop immunity against smallpox.

And let's try another question.

This time we have a statement which reads, Edward Jenner's experiments with vaccination produced mixed results.

But is that statement true or false? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that that statement was false.

But why is it that statement was incorrect? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that that original statement was incorrect because Jenner repeated his experiment 23 times, all of which produced the same results, proving that cowpox gave people immunity against smallpox.

So we are now in a good position to put all of our knowledge about Edward Jenner and vaccination into practise.

So how was the scientific method important for Edward Jenner's discovery of vaccination? You should consider the role of observation and experimentation in Jenner's work.

So pause the video here and press play when you're ready to reflect on your response.

Okay, well done for all of your hard work on that task.

So I asked you, how was the scientific method important for Edward Jenner's discovery of vaccination? And your answer may have included, the scientific method involves testing and gaining knowledge based on observation and experimentation.

These methods were very important for Jenner's discovery of vaccination.

For example, observation of milkmaids and farmers led Jenner to suspect that cowpox helped people to gain immunity from smallpox.

Jenner then conducted the same experiment 23 times, which involved infecting different people with cowpox and later with smallpox.

In all of these cases, Jenner's patients showed no signs of suffering from smallpox.

In this way, Jenner's commitment to the scientific method proved that vaccination gave people immunity from smallpox.

So, really well done if your own response look something like that model which we've just seen.

And so now we are ready to move on to the third and final part of our lesson where we are going to think about the significance of Jenner's vaccine.

Jenner published his work on vaccination in 1798.

These findings attracted large amounts of attention.

However, there was both considerable opposition as well as support for Jenner's discovery of vaccination.

Despite all of the experiments Jenner had conducted to show that vaccination worked, there was still a wide range of people unwilling to accept this new method.

For one, whilst Jenner had practical evidence to show that vaccination worked, he could not explain why it did, as he was unaware the role of germs like viruses in causing disease.

As a result, it was harder for Jenner to convince some opponents to accept his discovery.

There was also religious opposition to vaccination.

Some members of the church argued that using animal infections in human medicine was unnatural and challenged God's will.

As religion remained important to most people at the beginning of the 19th century, the opposition of some priests encouraged many others to reject vaccination.

Furthermore, some people rejected vaccination simply out of self-interest.

Many doctors had built successful businesses around inoculation, but vaccination would make their methods unnecessary.

Therefore, many inoculators opposed vaccination to protect their profits.

So I want you to study the image shown on the screen.

Based on the image, how can you tell that some opponents considered Jenner's smallpox vaccine to be unnatural? Think about specific details that you can see in the image.

So pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who identified that in the picture, we can see people growing cow features from their bodies.

This was intended to give the message that vaccination was unnatural for people to receive.

Jenner's findings and the careful instructions he produced for how to carry out vaccinations did allow many people to gain protection against smallpox.

Between 1803 and 1805, 12,000 people were vaccinated in Britain.

However, the extent of anti-vaccination opposition meant that it took some time for vaccination to truly become popular.

Nevertheless, to Jenner's supporters, vaccination clearly had many advantages when compared to inoculation.

In particular, patients who were vaccinated did not go for a period where they were infectious and could spread smallpox to others.

Consequently, it was not necessary to isolate people after they were vaccinated.

So the process was quicker, cheaper, and safer than inoculation.

These benefits made vaccination particularly appealing to the British government.

In 1853, a law was passed making it compulsory for all newborn babies to be vaccinated against smallpox, although this law was not properly enforced.

Following a major smallpox outbreak in the early 1870s, the government began punishing people with fines if they did not vaccinate their children.

This ensured that many more people became vaccinated.

The benefits of these policies became clear quickly.

Whereas death rates from smallpox in England and Wales stood at 401 per million in 1852 and 1012 per million in 1871, this rate averaged just 21 per million across the last 25 years of the 19th century.

Indeed, the effectiveness and eventual popularity of smallpox vaccinations meant that the disease was completely wiped out in Britain and worldwide by 1979.

So let's make sure all of our knowledge about the significance of Jenner's vaccine is secure.

Why was vaccination safer than inoculation against smallpox? Was it because patients were not introduced to any diseases, because patients did not go through an infectious period, or because the procedure was much quicker? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said the correct answer was B, vaccination was safer than inoculation against smallpox because patients did not go through an infectious period.

Another advantage was that the procedure was much quicker, but the speed with which vaccinations could be carried out didn't make the procedure safer than inoculation.

So that wouldn't have been the right answer to this question.

And let's try another question.

In which year did the British government first introduce laws to make smallpox vaccinations compulsory? Pause the video here and press play when you are ready to check your answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said the correct answer was 1853.

In 1853, the government first introduced the law making smallpox vaccinations compulsory for newborn babies.

And let's try one final question.

Based on your own knowledge and the data shown in the table on the screen, which claim is most valid? That smallpox deaths fell constantly after Jenner discovered vaccines, that compulsory vaccine laws prevented large outbreaks of smallpox, or that government finds increase the effectiveness of smallpox vaccines.

Pause video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was C.

Government finds increased the effectiveness of smallpox vaccines.

These fines were introduced in the early 1870s after a particularly deadly outbreak of smallpox in Britain.

We can see that whereas smallpox deaths had been at 1012 per million in 1871 then average just 21 per million people between 1875 and 1899, suggesting the effectiveness of those government fines.

So we're now in a good position to put all of our knowledge into practise.

I want you to study Aisha's view.

Aisha says that, although Jenner's vaccine worked, it was not the most important reason why smallpox prevention improved in 19th-century Britain.

How far do you agree with Aisha's view? I want you to write two paragraphs to explain your answer.

So pause the video here and press play when you are ready to reflect on your response.

Okay, well done for all of your effort on that task.

So I asked you how far did you agree with Aisha's view? And your answer may have included, Aisha is correct to highlight that factors other than Jenner's vaccine alone helped ensure smallpox prevention improved in 19th-century Britain.

For instance, there was considerable opposition from groups such as the church and inoculators which hurt the initial popularity of Jenner's smallpox vaccine.

Therefore, uptake of the smallpox vaccine became most significant only when compulsory laws requiring vaccination were introduced and strictly enforced by the British government in the 1850s and 1870s.

Therefore, it could be argued that government action was more important than Jenner's vaccine for improvements in smallpox prevention.

Nevertheless, Aisha's view does not give enough credit to Jenner's vaccine.

Jenner's use of cowpox to give people immunity to smallpox proved effective and was both quicker and safer than inoculation.

This was because vaccination did not leave patients infectious at all, so there was no need to isolate them from others.

Whilst it took time for Jenner's work to be fully recognised, it was because of these advantages that the British government increasingly supported vaccination as a method of smallpox prevention.

Once this backing was in place, smallpox death rates dropped dramatically in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Therefore, the strengths of Jenner's vaccine encouraged further developments which helped improve smallpox prevention in Britain.

So really well done if your own response looks something like that model which we've just seen.

And so now we've reached the end of today's lesson, which puts us in a good position to summarise our knowledge about Edward Jenner and vaccination.

Smallpox was a very deadly disease in Britain.

Inoculation helped people develop immunity but could still risk patients' health and involved a long overall process.

Edward Jenner conducted multiple experiments with cowpox to discover a vaccine for smallpox in 1796.

Jenner's vaccine was safe and effective, but initially faced widespread opposition, including from religious groups and inoculators.

In the second half of the 19th century, government actions, including compulsory vaccination and fines, led to a major fall in smallpox death rates.

So really well done for all of your work during today's lesson.

It's been a pleasure to help guide you for our resources today, and I look forward to seeing you again in future as we continue to think about medicine through time and health and the people in Britain.