Smallpox Wksht

Small Pox: Review of the Scientific Method Directions: As you read through this real-life example of the scientific method, answer each question as you come to it. Smallpox is a terrible disease that once killed thousands of people every year. Today doctors think smallpox may be totally gone from the world. This is mostly because of the work of an English doctor named Edward Jenner, who lived from 1749 to 1853. When Jenner was a young doctor, an epidemic (a situation in which many people catch a certain disease) of smallpox broke out. He worked hard to save his patients, but many of them died. He noticed that milkmaids (the women who milked the cows on dairy farms) did not seem to catch the disease. He decided to find out why. 1. As the first step in his process, what question did Jenner ask himself?

He talked to many milkmaids and discovered that the women often caught a disease called cowpox from the cows. This disease caused spots like smallpox, but the spots were only on the women's hands, and the disease wasn't very serious; no one ever died of cowpox. The remarkable thing was that no one who had cowpox ever seemed to catch smallpox. 2. What hypothesis would you make if you were Jenner?

Jenner guessed that having cowpox somehow protected people against smallpox for the rest of their lives. 3. How do you think Jenner decided to test his guess?