Sutton and Jenner

This chapter looks at how Daniel Sutton died forgotten at the age of eighty-three on February 3, 1819. There was no institution to carry Sutton's name into the era of vaccination; his family was scattered and none had any connection with medicine. There is not a single Sutton memorial in London or anywhere in the country, or, as far as is known, in the rest of the world. His importance in the defeat of smallpox would not be acknowledged even now if it were not for the interest historians have taken in eighteenth-century medicine in recent years. There was certainly contemporary support for the view that Suttonian inoculation had had a hugely beneficial effect on health in the eighteenth century. While vaccination was hailed as much safer and more successful than Suttonian inoculation, smallpox continued to attack communities throughout the nineteenth century and Edward Jenner's reputation waxed and waned.