Calle de Jenner

The English physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823) gives his name to this Almagro street for developing the first vaccine in history, against smallpox. Jenner started from something the countryside already knew: milkmaids caught cowpox, a mild version, and afterward did not fall ill with human smallpox, the disease that killed or disfigured. In May 1796 he tested the idea. He took material from a pustule on the hand of an infected dairymaid and made two incisions in the arm of an eight-year-old boy; weeks later he inoculated him with human smallpox and the boy did not sicken. From the cow came the word too: Jenner formed it from the Latin vacca, and hence “vaccine.” The street links calle de Almagro with paseo de la Castellana, in an area of small palaces and embassies.