The 20p value of "The Patients Tale" set of stamps (SG 2080), part of the M illennium Series issued on 2nd March 1999 features a cow whose markings illustrate Edward Jenner vaccinating a child. The stamp commemorated Jenner's contribution to the treatment of smallpox.

Edward Jenner, born in 1749, was the youngest son of the vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. He studied medicine, latterly at St. George's Hospital in London before returning to Berkeley as a doctor at the age of 23. At tha t time smallpox was the major killer disease of the 18th century, killing s ome 45,000 people in Britain each year. Those who survived were often sever ely disfigured or blind. At the time, inoculation was used as a method of p roviding immunity from the disease.

This involved taking some of the pus fr om a smallpox scab and spreading it into an open would, resulting in a mild dose of the disease that then provided immunity from further attacks. Howe ver, this sometimes caused the death of the person being inoculated or the person became a carrier of the disease.

Many of the people that Jenner tried to inoculate refused saying that as th ey had suffered from a mild form of cowpox, a disease that affected cattle, they were immune from smallpox. Jenner then observed the local milkmaids a nd in May 1796 he conducted an experiment by scraping the pus from a cowpox sore on the arm of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid, and inserting it into two cu ts on the arm of 8 year old James Phipps who caught cowpox. On 1st July 179 6 he did the same, only this time with the pus from a smallpox sore. Jenner found that the boy did not catch smallpox. Jenner then conducted this expe riment on a further 23 people and all were found to be immune from smallpox .

This technique was not new, but was unknown in Britain. It was widely pra ctised in eastern countries and the method of vaccination was brought to Br itain by Lady Mary Montagu, the wife of the British Ambassador to Turkey in 1721, seventy-five years before Jenner used the technique.

Jenner called this new technique of providing immunity from smallpox "vacci nation" which means "from a cow". He submitted his findings to the Royal S ociety in 1798, but they refused to publish them on the grounds that other doctors objected to vaccination and that it was "so at variance with establ ished knowledge". However, members of the Royal Family were vaccinated and the practice became widely accepted abroad. in 1802, Jenner was awarded A3 10,000 by the government and a further A320,000 in 1806. In 1840, vaccinat ion became free for all infants and became compulsory in the UK in 1853.

In 1980, the World health Organization declared that smallpox had been eradic ated from all parts of the world.

The stamp was designed by Peter Brooks and was printed in photogravure by T he House of Questa on nonfluorescent coated paper and is numbered "40" in t he Millennium series. This stamp and the others in the set can be purchased

from Pennyred.