Benjamin Jesty: the first vaccinator revealed.

The article focuses on a portrait of Benjamin Jesty which was done in 1805 by Michel W. Sharp. Jesty was a farmer from England who faced a smallpox epidemic in 1774 and decide to make his own smallpox vaccine for his wife and two sons from cowpox lymph taken from lesions on the udder of a smallpox infected cow that he owned. In 1805 Jesty accepted an invitation to visit the offices of the Original Vaccine Pock Institution in London, where he met with the institution's physicians, surgeons and apothecaries to discuss his vaccination efforts. The group was so impressed with Jesty's work that they commissioned the painting to honor him.