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, 1802: Wellcome Collection
Wed, 03 Mar, 2021 - 08:30
Laurence Geary
Smallpox or variola is the only human disease to have been eradicated by vaccination, the last natural case occurring in 1977.
A climate change council sub-committee is no longer operating. Its chairman thinks it was disbanded because of politics – but cabinet member for climate change Keith Williams denies it. He insists putting the work on a more formal and effective footing was behind the move. When the Conservative administration set up a cross-party climate change working group in January 2019 one of its sub-groups – for buildings, industry, economy and planning – was set up and chaired by Labour councillor Jane Milner-Barry. Coun Milner Barry – well known for her focus on the environment – said: “It had a wide remit. It was a cross-party group – the last meeting had four Labour members and four Conservatives and officers came along and I invited people who were interested from business and other groups.