Cork doctor had crucial role in combating smallpox
Cork doctor had crucial role in combating smallpox John Milner Barry, a Cork medical practitioner, was an early vaccination convert in Ireland after he recognised in 1800 that variolation was not effective enough to eradicate smallpox, writes Laurence Geary of UCC's History Department Edward Jenner vaccinating patients in the Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital at St Pancras in London. Jenner had noticed that farm workers who contracted a mild pox disease from livestock, usually from milking infected cows, were subsequently immune to natural and inoculated smallpox. Watercolour after J Gillray...