EDWARD JENNER, THE DISCOVERER OF VACCINATION.
It is to a "country doctor" that England and the world owe one of the greatest benefits that modern medical science has conferred on the race, in the practice of vaccination. The youngest son of a Gloucestershire clergyman, Edward Jenner was placed, about 1763, as apprentice to a surgeon at Sodbury; and it was there, it is stated, that first the possibility of arresting the then dreaded and dreadful ravages of small-pox entered his mind. He accidentally learned, from the conversation of a young serving woman—who boasted that she was safe from that disease because she had had "cow-pox"—that among servants in the country there prevailed a belief that the small-pox could not attack any one into whose system had been absorbed the virus from a diseased cow. From that time Jenner never lost sight of the idea. He spent some time in London finishing his studies, under the prelections of John Hunter; and then he settled, for life as it proved, at Berkeley, in Gloucestershire. Pursuing inquiries and experiments on the subject of vaccination, he established the efficacy of the rural system of inducing "cow-pox" as a preventive against small-pox; which had originated by inoculation, accidental or designed, with some of the matter afforded by a peculiar disease of the udder of a cow, and which could be communicated by inoculation from one human being to another with the same preventive efficacy. In 1796, a friend of Jenner's, to whom he had communicated the results of his inquiry—Mr. Cline, surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital—first employed vaccination in London; and the practice was speedily adopted in the army and navy, the Government bestowing on Jenner honours and rewards, and the University of Oxford conferring on him the diploma of Doctor of Medicine. Just, however, as Blackmore and Tanner had vehemently opposed inoculation, so did many members of the Faculty, foremost among them Moseley, Birch, and Woodville, oppose the new system of vaccination. The London mob were asked and induced to believe that if they submitted to vaccination they were in jeopardy of being converted into members of the canine species, and that the operation would infallibly be followed by the development of horns, and tail, and "thick natural fell" of hair. A child was said to have never ceased, since he received the matter into his system, to run about on all fours and imitate the lowing of a bull! In a caricature Jenner was mounted on a cow. Moseley indited verses, of which this is a sample:—
"O Jenner! thy book, nightly phantasies rousing,
Full oft makes me quake for my heart's dearest treasure;
For fancy, in dreams, oft presents them all browsing
On commons, just like little Nebuchadnezzar.
There, nibbling at thistle, stand Jem, Joe, and Mary,
On their foreheads, oh, horrible! crumpled horns bud;
There Tom with his tail, and poor William all hairy,
Reclined in a corner, are chewing the cud."
Even in Berkeley, Jenner was pursued with ridicule and suspicion; but he went quietly on his rounds, waiting confidently till the storm was laid, plashing through the Gloucestershire lanes in the garb that an acquaintance has thus described:—"He was dressed in a blue coat and yellow buttons, buckskins, well-polished jockey-boots, with handsome silver spurs, and he carried a smart whip with a silver handle. His hair, after the fashion, was done up in a club, and he wore a broad-brimmed hat." But Jenner, says Mr. Jeaffreson, found also compensation for all the ridicule and opposition "in the enthusiastic support of Rowland Hill, who not only advocated vaccination in his ordinary conversation, but from the pulpit used to say, after his sermon to his congregation, wherever he preached, 'I am ready to vaccinate to-morrow morning as many children as you choose; and if you wish them to escape that horrid disease, the small-pox, you will bring them.' A Vaccine Board was also established at the Surrey Chapel—i.e. the Octagon Chapel, in Blackfriars Road. 'My Lord,' said Rowland Hill once to a nobleman, 'allow me to present to your Lordship my friend, Dr. Jenner, who has been the means of saving more lives than any other man.' 'Ah!' observed Jenner, 'would that I, like you, could say—souls.' There was no cant in this. Jenner was a simple, unaffected, and devout man. His last words were, 'I do not marvel that men are grateful to me; but I am surprised that they do not feel gratitude to God for making me a medium of good.'"