The Day a Doctor Said, “Trust Me, I Have a Cow”

May 14, 1796 –
Edward Jenner performed what is widely considered the first successful smallpox inoculation. The method? Jenner scraped a bit of pus—yes, pus—from a blister on a milkmaid infected with cowpox and rubbed it into a small cut on the arm of an unsuspecting (and very likely confused) 8-year-old boy named James Phipps.

(Brief aside: How much do you trust your child’s doctor? Imagine this conversation — “Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Phipps. Little Jimmy looks great. Lungs are clear, no fevers, textbook eight-year-old. Oh, and before you go — I’m going to slice his arm open and rub cow sore juice into the wound. No need to panic, it’s for science.”)

To Jenner’s eternal credit – and Jimmy’s unintentional bravery – it worked. The boy developed a mild fever, recovered quickly, and showed immunity to smallpox. Thus began the long, winding road to modern immunization, all thanks to a combination of bovine biology and bold 18th-century guesswork. But wait! This marvel of medicine came just four days after Napoleon kicked the Austrians around at the Battle of Lodi on May 10, 1796. Coincidence? Probably. But let’s not get picky with our historical drama.

And if you like eerie coincidences, try this timeline on for size:

May 10, 1774: King Louis XV dies… of smallpox.
May 14, 1610: Henry IV (his grandfather) is assassinated.
May 14, 1643: Louis XIII (his dad) dies.

Clearly, French kings should have avoided May altogether.

After Louis XV’s death, his grandson Louis XVI took the throne – famously married to Marie Antoinette, who reportedly told the poor to eat cake (which, in fairness, they could not afford to do even sarcastically). This tone-deaf ruling class behavior led directly to La Révolution, which kicked off on La Quatorze Juillet – French for “The Fourth of July,” if you ask someone who wants to sound cultured while being deeply wrong.

Cue the Rain of Terror, then the Rise of Napoleon, then the Battle of Lodi, and suddenly we’re back to Edward Jenner and his revolutionary use of cow-goo science. Hey, it’s not technically a full circle, but it is the kind of spiraling chaos history excels at — especially when everyone keeps dying on May 14.