In 1796 British physician Edward Jenner decided to undertake an experiment with his gardener’s 8-year-old son, James Phipps. At the time, it was hypothesised that prior infection with similar diseases would render one immune to smallpox, which was ravaging through the population, but there was no consolidated scientific work on the subject. He noted that his milkmaid was immune to the disease, likely due to her regular contact with cattle which carry cowpox, a relatively milder virus from the same family. To test his hypothesis, he scraped some pus from his milkmaid’s hands and infected the boy with little regard for his consent to the experiment. After he recovered from a mild illness, James Phipps was exposed to smallpox and proved to be immune, thus confirming Edward Jenner’s hypothesis. This led him to publish scientific writings on the subject and credited him with the invention of the first vaccine. The scene of the inoculation is represented in this painting against the floral background of the garden, with the humans bearing zoomorphic traits. Edward Jenner has a collar with a spiky tail resembling a scorpion, while James Phipps has a pair of cattle-like horns and exchanges a glance with the cow that they are resting upon, which is presumably the one that made the cowpox inoculation possible.