ON THE DEATH OF A MISER.
"Tom at last has laid by his old niggardly forms,
And now gives good dinners; to whom pray?--the worms."
ON LORD BERKELEY'S HUNTSMAN, WHO DIED IN THE CHASE.
"Determined much higher to hoist up his name,
Than Nimrod the hunter, in annals of fame,
'Hark forward!' cried Charles, and gallantly whirled
His high-mettled steed o'er the gates of the world."
DEATH AND MR. PEACH.
A Short Dialogue. N. B.--Mr. P. died in April.
"P.--Awhile forbear thy horrid gripe,
Do pray, dread Sir! remember
Peaches are never fairly ripe
'Till August or September."
"D.--To gratify my longing taste,
And make thy flavour fine,
I had thee in a hot-house placed,
And moistened well with wine."
"Mr. Peach had shortened his life by the too free use of the bottle."
We have said that Dr. Jenner's supreme accomplishment in science was the working out of the vaccination problem to a great humane conclusion. His discovery was no mere accident, nor chance confirmation of a medical tradition. He devoted himself for many years to the study of cowpox, as he had the opportunity to see it, and it is what we know of this investigation, his patience and care in eliminating all the factors of error, that stamped Jenner as a medical scientist worthy of honor. When he began practice in Berkeley, he made many inquiries among his professional brethren, with regard to their opinion of the protecting power of cowpox, but most of them had either paid no attention to such reports, or shook their heads at once, and said they were at most popular traditions, due merely to coincidences and unsupported by any credible evidence. In the face of this, Jenner began to follow John Hunter's advice to investigate. The first careful investigation dates from about 1775, and it took him more than five years to clear away the difficulties surrounding the solution of the question, in which he was interested.
As Pasteur found in the next century, when investigating the silkworm disease, Jenner soon learned that there was [{95}] more than one disease called cowpox, and that the confusion consequent upon the existence of at least two specific diseases and a number of skin affections of the hands of various kinds, which existed among dairy workers, made the recognition of the protective power of true cowpox extremely difficult. After he had differentiated genuine cowpox, however, there was no difficulty in tracing its apparent protective power. He soon found, however, that the protection was not afforded unless the cowpox had been communicated at a particular stage of the disease. In other words, after the true vaccinia has run its course, secondary affections of the skin of the cows usually take place, and if dairy workers became infected from these lesions, then no protection against smallpox is afforded them. Another important observation that Jenner made at this time was that the disease known as grease in horses is the same affection as cowpox, and that both of these diseases are smallpox as modified by the organism in which they develop. It may be said at once that this opinion so difficult to arrive at, more than a century ago, when so little was known of comparative pathology, is held at the present day, and was confirmed by the last series of investigations made under the auspices of the Jenner Society, in England.