Margret Gudnadottir
In 1796, Dr Jenner did a crucial experiment: by simply transferring fluid from original cowpox lesions to mild abrasions on human skin. Smallpox infection on the treated people in his medical district in the coming epidemics was successfully prevented, as many cowpox infected people had claimed. From his experiments until October 1977, when the last smallpox patient was found in Somalia, 181 years passed. Now, the world has been free of smallpox for 37 years. Eradication of this terrible disease is one of the greatest successes in the history of medicine.