Thomas Nettleton

Thomas Nettleton (1683-1742) was an English physician who carried out some of the earliest systematic programmes of smallpox vaccination and who went on to statistical investigation of the outcomes.

Little is known of Nettleton other than that he was a physician in Halifax Yorkshire. By 1722, Nettleton was aware of several early accounts of vaccination when a smallpox outbreak occurred in his area. He went on to vaccinate at least forty people and reported the results in 1724. However, it was only later that year that he considered the difference in mortality between those who had received the vaccination and those who had not. It was his letter to James Jurin that motivated Jurin himself to gather further data and perform his own analysis.