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The founder of pathological anatomy as a science was Morgagni, born in 1682, in Forli, Italy,—a pupil of Valsalva, and, at the age of nineteen, the assistant of the latter. It was not until his seventy-ninth year, after he had published several works, that he allowed his famous work on pathological anatomy to appear. This is the historical classic, De Seclibus et Causis Morborum, published in Venice in 1761. Its famous author did not cease work, even when he became blind, and to him we owe the maxim that observations should be "weighed, not counted." He was very versatile, and well informed in all branches of science and literature, and possessed a remarkable memory; likewise was the first to devote attention extensively and thoroughly to the anatomical products of common diseases, since, before his time, little had been regarded but rare discoveries in the body. He also called attention to the important bearing which the history of the disease has toward its products, and found his discoveries of advantage, even when they were unable to promote the cure of disease, because of the light which they threw upon physiology and normal anatomy, and because they prevented incurable patients from being continually tormented with drugs intended to cure them; also because pathological investigations alone could settle disputes in diagnosis and matters of honor among physicians. He died in 1772.
Morgagni's legitimate successors in Great Britain were Baillie ( 1761-1823), a son of John Hunter's sister, and Sir Everard Home,—Hunter's brother-in-law,—who became professor in the Royal College of Surgeons, and was intrusted by Hunter with the work of describing his collection. Home, however, in a most discreditable way, burned several volumes of Hunter's own descriptions, in order to appropriate to himself the sole credit of the work. He has gone down to fame especially because of his book on the prostate.
One of the most notable events in the history of medicine was the introduction of the systematic practice of preventive inoculation against small-pox. It is so generally taught that this is entirely due to the efforts of Jenner—or, rather, we are so often allowed to think it, without being taught otherwise—that the measure deserves an historical sketch. The communication of the natural disease to the healthy, in order to afford protection,—or, in other words, the communication of small-pox to prevent the same,—reaches back into antiquity. It is mentioned in the Sanscrit Yedas as performed by Brahmins, who employed pus procured from small-pox vesicles a year before. They rubbed the place selected for operation until the skin was red, then scratched with a sharp instrument, and laid upon it cotton soaked in the variolous pus, moistened with water from the sacred Ganges. Along with this measure they insisted upon careful hygienic regulations, to which, in large measure, their good results were due. Among the Chinese was practiced what was known as "pock-sowing," and ten centuries before Christ the Celestials introduced into the nasal cavities of young children pledgets of cotton saturated with variolous pus. The Arabians inoculated with needles, and so did the Circassians, while in North Africa incisions were made between the fingers, and among some of the negroes inoculation was performed in or upon the nose. In Constantinople, under the Greeks, the custom had long been naturalized, and was practiced by old women, instructed in the art, who regarded it as a revelation of Saint Mary. The first accounts of this practice were given to the Royal Society by Timoni, a physician of Constantinople, in 1714. The actual introduction of the practice into the West, however, was due to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who died in 1762, and who was wife of the English Ambassador to the Porte in 1717. She had her son inoculated in Constantinople, by Maitland, and on her return to London, in 1721, her daughter also was inoculated. During the same years experiments were undertaken by Maitland upon criminals, and, as these turned out favorably, the Prince of Wales and his sisters were inoculated by Mead. The practice was then more or less speedily adopted on this side of the Atlantic, but suffered occasional severe blows, because of unfortunate cases here and there, such as never can be avoided. The clergy, especially, using the Scripture, as designing men can always do, became warm opponents of the practice, and stigmatized it as an atrocious invasion of the divine prerogative. Nevertheless, in 1746 the Bishop of Worcester recommended it from the pulpit, established houses for inoculation, and thus made it again popular. In Germany it was generally favored, and a little later came into vogue in France and Italy. In 1757 Robert Sutton, near London, professed to have made fifteen thousand inoculations without a single fatal case; he kept his patients on a strict diet for nine days, then inoculated with the smallest possible quantity of virus. The operation was not prohibited in England until the year 1840, although it involved much greater dangers than vaccination with cow-pox.
The first inoculation with cow-pox seems to have been performed in 1774: by a farmer of Gloucester, named Jesty, though the pioneer in the extensive and general introduction of this method was Edward Jenner (1749-1823), of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, who, therefore, is generally known as the "Father of Vaccination." The son of a clergyman, he began early the study of medicine and surgery, and during his apprenticeship received from a milkmaid information of the protective power of cow-pox against variola, as established by popular observation. (Sutton and others had proved that inoculation of sheep-pox was not efficient.) This communication so struck Jenner as a means of affording protection to the whole human race that the subject never afterward left his mind. In 1770 he became a pupil of John Hunter, and when he communicated to him this idea the great surgeon said: "Do not think; investigate!" Accordingly he went to Berkeley and performed the little operation which has made him famous; and from 1778 until 1788 he communicated to Sir Everard Home such observations as he had made. But the first vaccination was performed in 1796, upon a boy, with matter from the hand of a maid who had contracted cow-pox in milking.
