FOOTNOTE
[1] Those only are here reckoned as discoverers from whose work may be traced not merely what might have been the beginning of the discovery, but the continuous history of events, consequent upon the evidence of its truth. Long, it is true, might under this rule be excluded; yet his work cannot fairly be separated from the history. Of course, in this, as in every similar case, there were some who maintained that there was nothing new in it. Before 1842 there were many instances in which persons underwent operations during insensibility. There may be very reasonable doubts about what is told of the ancient uses of Indian hemp, and mandragora; but most of those who saw much surgery before 1846 must have seen operations done on patients during insensibility produced by narcotics, dead-drunkenness, mesmerism, large losses of blood or other uncertain and often impracticable methods. Besides, there were many guesses and suggestions for making operations painless. But they were all fruitless; and they fail at that which may be a fair test for most of the claims of discoverers—the test of consequent and continuous history. When honour is claimed for the authors of such fruitless works as these, it may fairly be said that blame rather than praise is due to them. Having seen, so far as they profess, they should not have rested till they could see much further.
JENNER AND PASTEUR
Sir J. Risdon Bennett, M.D.
[Sir J. Risdon Bennett was a leading physician of London for many years, holding the highest offices as an educator and administrator. The article from which the following extracts have been taken appeared in the Leisure Hour, 1882.]
No department of medical science has made greater advances in modern times than that which is termed “Preventive Medicine.” Nor is there any in which the public at large is more deeply interested, and the knowledge of which it is of more importance should be diffused as widely as possible. The devoted and zealous service rendered by the medical profession in all questions relating to the maintenance of health and the prevention of disease is a sufficient answer, if any be needed, to the ignorant and prejudiced statements that are sometimes made, that in support of various scientific theories and proceedings medical men are actuated by interested and selfish motives. No name stands, or will ever stand, out more brilliant among the benefactors of mankind than that of Edward Jenner, by whose genius and labours untold multitudes of human lives have been saved, and an incalculable amount of human suffering and misery prevented. At the present time various circumstances, both social and scientific, have combined to recall attention to this illustrious man and his remarkable scientific and beneficial labours. It is not, however, our intention on the present occasion to give either a complete sketch of his life, or a detailed account of his work. But in order to show the connection between his discoveries and more recent advances in the same field of scientific investigation, it will be necessary to give a brief resume of Jenner's life-work, and the benefits which he conferred on the human race throughout the world.
He was born on the 17th May, 1749, at Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, of which place his father was the vicar. On leaving Dr. Washbourn's school, at Cirencester, he was apprenticed to Mr. Ludlow, a gentleman in practice as a surgeon at Sudbury, near Bristol. On the completion of his apprenticeship he came to London, and had the good fortune to be placed under the care of the celebrated John Hunter, with whom he resided for two years. The observing powers and taste for natural history which Jenner had early shown, as a boy, were quickened and fostered by the daily example and friendship of the illustrious man who, as surgeon and lecturer at St. George's Hospital, was carrying on those laborious scientific investigations, and building up that marvelous monument of his genius, which have rendered his name and fame immortal. So much skill and knowledge had been shown by Jenner in arranging the natural history collection of Sir J. Banks, to whom he had been recommended by Hunter, that he was offered the appointment of naturalist to Captain Cook's second expedition. He, however, declined this and other flattering proposals, in order to return to the rural scenes of his boyhood, and be near an elder brother who had been the guide of his orphanhood. He rapidly acquired an extensive business as a general practitioner, while his polished manners, wide culture, and kind and genial social qualifications, secured him welcome admission to the first society of his neighbourhood. His conscientious devotion to his professional duties did not, however, quell his enthusiastic love of natural history, or preclude him from gaining a distinguished reputation as a naturalist. A remarkable paper on the cuckoo, read before the Royal Society and printed in the Transactions, gained him the fellowship of that illustrious body. Jenner's paper established what has been properly termed the “parasitic” character of the cuckoo, i. e., it deposits its eggs in the nests of other birds, by whose warmth they are hatched, and by whom the young are fed. His observations have received general confirmation by subsequent observers, more especially the remarkable facts that the parent cuckoo selects the nests of those birds whose eggs require the same period of time for their incubation as its own (which are much larger), and the food of whose young is the same, viz., insects, which the young cuckoo ultimately monopolizes by ousting the young of the rightful owner of the nest.
By this and similar studies was Jenner preparing his acute powers of investigation for the great purpose of his life. For this he secured more time and more extended opportunities for inquiry by abandoning general practice, and confining himself to medicine proper, having obtained, in 1792, the degree of M.D. from the University of St. Andrews. In conjunction with the “dear man,” as he used to call his great master, John Hunter, he carried on his experiments illustrative of the structure and functions of animals. With great industry and ingenuity he explained some of the unaccountable problems in ornithology; he ascertained the laws which regulate the migration of birds; made considerable advances in geology and in our knowledge of organic remains; he amended various pharmaceutical processes; he was an acute anatomist and pathologist, and investigated and explained one of the most painful affections of the heart, and many of the diseases to which animals are liable. By such labours he established a just claim to distinction as a medical philosopher, apart from his claims to the gratitude and admiration of mankind by his self-denying and devoted labours in connection with his great discovery; but like other great men absorbed in the establishing of important truths, he was regardless of personal objects, and never ostentatiously promulgated his claims to public distinction.