L'Origine de la vaccine.

Hand-coloured etching, 21,3 x 28,1 cm (visible), laid paper, address in lower margin: "A Paris chez Depeuille Rue des Mathurins Sorbonne aux deux Pilastres d'Or.", with the title above: "L'ORIGINE DE LA VACCINE.", numbered 3 at top right (slightly browned, few spots, small tear at top centre).

In wooden frame (not studied outside frame).

Satirical print on the origin of vaccines. Three men surrounding a cow and a milkmaid. In 1796, the physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823) took pus from the hand of a milkmaid with cowpox and scratched it into the arm of a young boy. Six weeks later he variolated the boy with smallpox, afterwards observing that he did not catch the disease. The term vaccine was derived from Variolae vaccinae (smallpox of the cow).