The most daring of Jenner's epigrams, out of the scores that we have perused, is the following—
ON READING ADAM SMITH.
"The priests may exclaim against cursing and swearing,
And tell us such things are quite beyond bearing;
But 'tis clear as the day their denouncing's a sham;
For a thousand good things may be learnt from Adam."
Babbage, in his "Decline of Science in England," has remarked that "some of the most valuable names which adorn the history of English science have been connected with this (the medical) profession." Of those names many have belonged to country doctors; amongst which Jenner has a conspicuous place.[22]
Jenner was a bright representative of that class of medical practitioners—sagacious, well-instructed, courageous, and self-dependent in intellect—who, at the close of the last century, began to spring up in all parts of the country, and have rapidly increased in number; so that now the prejudiced, vulgar, pedantic doctors of Sterne's and Smollett's pages are extinct—no more to be found on the face of the earth than are the drunken squires who patronized and insulted them.
Of such a sort was Samuel Parr, the father of the famous classic scholar and Whig politician of the same name. The elder Parr was a general practitioner at Harrow, "a man" (as his son described him) "of a very robust and vigorous intellect." Educated in his early years at Harrow School, Samuel Parr (the son) was taken from that splendid seminary at the age of fourteen years and apprenticed to his father. For three or four years he applied himself to the mastery of the elements of surgical and medical knowledge—dispensing medicines, assisting at operations, and performing all the duties which a country doctor's pupil was expected to perform. But he had not nerve enough for the surgical department of the profession. "For a physician," he used to say, "I might have done well, but for a surgeon never." His father consequently sent him to Cambridge, and allowed him to turn his intellects to those pursuits in which Nature had best fitted him to excel. Dr. Parr's reminiscences of this period of medical instruction were nearly all pleasant—and some of them were exquisitely droll. At that early age his critical taste and faculty caused him to subject the prescriptions that came under his notice to a more exact scrutiny than the dog-Latin of physicians usually undergoes.
"Father," cried the boy, glancing his eye over a prescription, "here's another mistake in the grammar!"
"Sam," answered the irritable sire, "d—— the prescription, make up the medicine."
Laudanum was a preparation of opium just then coming into use. Mr. Parr used it at first sparingly and cautiously. On one occasion he administered a small quantity to a patient, and the next day, pleased with the effects of the dose, expressed his intention (but hesitatingly) to repeat it.
"You may do that safely, sir," said the son.
"Don't be rash, boy. Beginners are always too bold. How should you know what is safe?" asked the father.