by John Rhodes
John Rhodes is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, has served on UK international vaccine missions, and published numerous articles in leading journals such as Nature, Science
, and The Lancet.
He is also the author of The End of Plagues: The Global Battle against Infectious Disease
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). His forthcoming book How to Make a Vaccine: An Essential Guide for COVID-19 and Beyond
will be published by the University of Chicago Press, on March 22nd, 2021).
An English country doctor?
Many are familiar with the unassuming English Country doctor whose insights and daring human experiment inscribed the first sentence in the story of vaccination we recognize today. Edward Jenner’s discovery of cow-pox vaccination in 1798 became the source for an ever-widening stream of endeavor which came to encircle the globe, culminating 180 years later in the complete eradication of the most feared contagion of all--smallpox.