A new campaign is seeking to get a medical pioneer back on the plinth he was banished from nearly 150 years ago.
The campaign wants vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner’s statue returned to Trafalgar Square, London, UK, from Kensington Gardens, where it has been for a century and a half.
Jenner developed the vaccine against smallpox and in 1858 Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, unveiled his statue in Trafalgar Square.
It lasted four years before being moved because of pressure from anti-vaccine campaigners.
The British Medical Journal said it was backing the revival of a campaign it started in 1862 against the "banishing" of the statue.
Writing in the journal Professor Gareth Williams, of Bristol University, says: "Ultimately, vaccination was the decisive weapon that eradicated smallpox in 1978, nearly 180 years after Jenner voiced his aspiration that his invention would achieve that aim."
An on-line petition has now been launched.
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