- Thomas Nettleton
Thomas Nettleton (1683-1742) was an English
physician who carried out some of the earliest systematic programmes ofsmallpox vaccination and who went on to statistical investigation of the outcomes. [cite book | title=The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present | last=Porter | first= R. | year=1997 | publisher=Harper Collins | id=ISBN 0-00-215173-1 | location=London | pages="p."275 | authorlink=Roy Porter ]Little is known of Nettleton other than that he was a physician in Halifax
Yorkshire . [ cite web | title=Biographical notes | work=James Lindley Library | publisher=Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh | accessdate=2007-09-06 | url=http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/trial_records/17th_18th_Century/huth_comm/huth_biogs.html ] By 1722, Nettleton was aware of several early accounts of vaccination when a smallpox outbreak occurred in his area. He went on to vaccinate at least forty people and reported the results in 1724. ["A letter from Dr. Nettleton, physician at Halifax in Yorkshire, to Dr. Whitaker, concerning the inoculation of the small pox", "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London" (1722 - 1723), 32: 35-38] However, it was only later that year that he considered the difference inmortality between those who had received the vaccination and those who had not. It was his letter toJames Jurin that motivated Jurin himself to gather further data and perform his own analysis. [ cite journal | author=Huth E. J. | year=2006 | title=Quantitative evidence for judgments on the efficacy of inoculation for the prevention of smallpox: England and New England in the 1700s | journal=Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine | accessdate=2007-09-06 | volume=99 | pages=262–266 | url=http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/trial_records/17th_18th_Century/jurin/jurin_commentary.php | doi=10.1258/jrsm.99.5.262 ] [" [http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/trial_records/17th_18th_Century/nettleton/nettleton_kp.html Part of a letter from Dr. Nettleton, physician at Halifax, to Dr. Jurin, R. S. Sec concerning the inoculation of the small pox, and the mortality of that distemper in the natural way] ", "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London" (1722 - 1723), 32: 209-212]References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.