JENNER INTRODUCES VACCINATION
a.d. 1798
SIR THOMAS J. PETTIGREW
In the advance of medical science no more famous discovery has been made than that of vaccination, that is, inoculation with the modified virus of a disease, thereby causing a mild form of it, in order to prevent a virulent attack. This treatment has in recent years been applied by the use of various serums and antitoxins against different diseases; but, originally and specifically, vaccination, as now understood, is inoculation with cowpox for the prevention of smallpox.
Jenner's work in connection with the modern introduction of this practice is fully described in the following pages. In a more primitive manner inoculation against smallpox was practised many centuries ago in India, China, and other lands. The first modern accounts of it are said to have been given by a Turkish physician in 1714. In England it was first actually employed through the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who (1716-1718) had observed it in Constantinople, and there seen her son inoculated. The practice soon spread through Western Europe and to North America.
Jenner's discoveries and demonstrations as to the specific value of the vaccine virus of cowpox, which led to the modern methods of vaccination for prevention of smallpox, proved of such efficacy and importance that the whole credit for this service to medical science has been popularly given to him. But among the intelligent it detracts nothing from his just fame to make due acknowledgment of previous work along similar lines.
There have always been some, since Jenner's time, and are still considerable numbers of people in different countries, strongly opposed to vaccination for smallpox, on the ground of what they deem its unscientific and dangerous nature. But the vast majority of medical practitioners, and of the world at large, are convinced of its vital benefits, and in several countries vaccination is made compulsory by the State.
Edward Jenner was born on May 17, 1749. He was a native of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, England. His father was the vicar of this place, and his mother was descended from an ancient family in Berkshire. In early life Jenner was deprived of his father, and the direction of his education devolved upon an elder brother, the Rev. Stephen Jenner. He attained a respectable proficiency in the classics, and his taste for natural history manifested an early development; for, at the age of nine, he had made a collection of the nests of the dormouse, and he employed the hours usually devoted by boys to play, in searching for fossils in the neighborhood. "No childish play to him was pleasing."
Intended for the medical profession, Jenner was apprenticed to Daniel Ludlow, of Sodbury, near Bristol, to acquire a knowledge of surgery and pharmacy; and, after the period of his apprenticeship had expired in 1770, he went to London to complete his professional studies, and was a student at St. George's Hospital, and a resident, for two years, in the family of the celebrated John Hunter. The similarity of their tastes and spirit of research will render it a matter of no surprise that he should become a most favorite pupil. That this was the case in an eminent degree the correspondence which was maintained between the two great physiologists sufficiently proves. "There was in both a directness and plainness of conduct, an unquestionable desire of knowledge, and a congenial love of truth."