Giacomo Pylarini

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Giacomo Pylarini

Italian physician who became the first to attempt to prevent disease through inoculation by injecting children with smallpox in 1701. By so doing, nearly a century before Edward Jenner's experiments with cowpox, he hoped to save them from the more serious disease that strikes adults. For this, as well as some of his other scientific investigations, Pylarini is considered to be the world's first immunologist.