The Royal Jennerian Society having failed, the national vaccine establishment was founded, for the extension of vaccination, in 1808. Jenner spent five months in London for the purpose of organizing it, but was then obliged, by the dangerous illness of one of his sons, to return to Berkeley. He had been appointed director of the institution; but he had no sooner left London than Sir Lucas Pepys, president of the college of physicians, neglected his recommendations, and formed the board out of the officials of that college and the college of surgeons. Jenner at once resigned his post as director, though he continued to give the benefit of his advice whenever it was needed, and this resignation was a bitter mortification to him. In 1810 his eldest son died, and Jenner’s grief at his loss, and his incessant labours, materially affected his health. In 1813 the university of Oxford conferred on him the degree of M.D. It was believed that this would lead to his election into the college of physicians, but that learned body decided that he could not be admitted until he had undergone an examination in classics. This Jenner at once refused; to brush up his classics would, he said, “be irksome beyond measure. I would not do it for a diadem. That indeed would be a bauble; I would not do it for John Hunter’s museum.”
He visited London for the last time in 1814, when he was presented to the Allied Sovereigns and to most of the principal personages who accompanied them. In the next year his wife’s death was the signal for him to retire from public life: he never left Berkeley again, except for a day or two, as long as he lived. He found sufficient occupation for the remainder of his life in collecting further evidence on some points connected with his great discovery, and in his engagements as a physician, a naturalist and a magistrate. In 1818 a severe epidemic of small-pox prevailed, and fresh doubts were thrown on the efficacy of vaccination, in part apparently owing to the bad quality of the vaccine lymph employed. This caused Jenner much annoyance, which was relieved by an able defence of the practice, written by Sir Gilbert Blane. But this led him, in 1821, to send a circular letter to most of the medical men in the kingdom inquiring into the effect of other skin diseases in modifying the progress of cow-pox. A year later he published his last work, On the Influence of Artificial Eruptions in Certain Diseases; and in 1823 he presented his last paper—“On the Migration of Birds”—to the Royal Society. On the 24th of January 1823 he retired to rest apparently as well as usual, and next morning rose and came down to his library, where he was found insensible on the floor, in a state of apoplexy, and with the right side paralysed. He never rallied, and died on the following morning.
A public subscription was set on foot, shortly after his death, by the medical men of his county, for the purpose of erecting some memorial in his honour, and with much difficulty a sufficient sum was raised to enable a statue to be placed in Gloucester Cathedral. In 1850 another attempt was made to set up a monument to him; this appears to have failed, but at length, in 1858, a statue of him was erected by public subscription in London.
Jenner’s life was written by the intimate friend of his later years, Dr John Baron of Gloucester (2 vols., 1827, 1838). See also Vaccination.
JENNER, SIR WILLIAM, Bart. (1815-1898), English physician, was born at Chatham on the 30th of January 1815, and educated at University College, London. He became M.R.C.S. in 1837, and F.R.C.P. in 1852, and in 1844 took the London M.D. In 1847 he began at the London fever hospital investigations into cases of “continued” fever which enabled him finally to make the distinction between typhus and typhoid on which his reputation as a pathologist principally rests. In 1849 he was appointed professor of pathological anatomy at University College, and also assistant physician to University College Hospital, where he afterwards became physician (1854-1876) and consulting physician (1879), besides holding similar appointments at other hospitals. He was also successively Holme professor of clinical medicine and professor of the principles and practice of medicine at University College. He was president of the college of physicians (1881-1888); he was elected F.R.S. in 1864, and received honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. In 1861 he was appointed physician extraordinary, and in 1862 physician in ordinary, to Queen Victoria, and in 1863 physician in ordinary to the prince of Wales; he attended both the prince consort and the prince of Wales in their attacks of typhoid fever. In 1868 he was created a baronet. As a consultant Sir William Jenner had a great reputation, and he left a large fortune when he died, at Bishop’s Waltham, Hants, on the 11th of December 1898, having then retired from practice for eight years owing to failing health.
JENNET, a small Spanish horse; the word is sometimes applied in English to a mule, the offspring of a she-ass and a stallion. Jennet comes, through Fr. genet, from Span, jinete, a light horseman who rides à la gineta, explained as “with his legs tucked up.” The name is taken to be a corruption of the Arabic Zenāta, a Berber tribe famed for its cavalry. English and French transferred the word from the rider to his horse, a meaning which the word has only acquired in Spain in modern times.
JENOLAN CAVES, a series of remarkable caverns in Roxburgh county, New South Wales, Australia; 113 m. W. by N. of Sydney, and 36 m. from Tarana, which is served by railway. They are the most celebrated of several similar groups in the limestone of the country; they have not yielded fossils of great interest, but the stalactitic formations, sometimes pure white, are of extraordinary beauty. The caves have been rendered easily accessible to visitors and lighted by electricity.