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.
JENSEN, WILHELM (1837–), German author, was born
at Heiligenhafen in Holstein on the 15th of February 1837, the
son of a local Danish magistrate, who came of old patrician
Frisian stock. After attending the classical schools at Kiel and
Lübeck, Jensen studied medicine at the universities of Kiel,
Würzburg and Breslau. He, however, abandoned the medical
profession for that of letters, and after engaging for some years
in individual private study proceeded to Munich, where he
associated with men of letters. After a residence in Stuttgart
(1865–1869), where for a short time he conducted the Schwäbische
Volks-Zeitung, he became editor in Flensburg of the
Norddeutsche Zeitung. In 1872 he again returned to Kiel, lived
from 1876 to 1888 in Freiburg im Breisgau, and since 1888 has
been resident in Munich.
Jensen is perhaps the most fertile of modern German writers of fiction, more than one hundred works having proceeded from his pen; but only comparatively few of them have caught the public taste; such are the novels, Karin von Schweden (Berlin, 1878); Die braune Erica (Berlin, 1868); and the tale, Die Pfeifer von Dusenbach, Eine Geschichte aus dem Elsass (1884). Among others may be mentioned: Barthenia (Berlin, 1877); Götz und Gisela (Berlin, 1886); Heimkunft (Dresden, 1894); Aus See und Sand (Dresden, 1897); Luv und Lee (Berlin, 1897); and the narratives, Aus den Tagen der Hansa (Leipzig, 1885); Aus stiller Zeit (Berlin, 1881–1885); and Heimath (1901). Jensen also published some tragedies, among which Dido (Berlin, 1870) and Der Kampf für’s Reich (Freiburg im Br., 1884) may be mentioned.
JENYNS, SOAME (1704–1787), English author, was born in London on the 1st of January 1704, and was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge. In 1742 he was chosen M.P. for Cambridgeshire, in which his property lay, and he afterwards sat for the borough of Dunwich and the town of Cambridge. From 1755 to 1780 he was one of the commissioners of the board of trade. He died on the 18th of December 1787.
For the measure of literary repute which he enjoyed during his life Jenyns was indebted as much to his wealth and social standing as to his accomplishments and talents, though both were considerable. His poetical works, the Art of Dancing (1727) and Miscellanies (1770), contain many passages graceful and lively though occasionally verging on licence. The first of his prose works was his Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1756). This essay was severely criticized on its appearance, especially by Samuel Johnson in the Literary Magazine. Johnson, in a slashing review—the best paper of the kind he ever wrote—condemned the book as a slight and shallow attempt to solve one of the most difficult of moral problems. Jenyns, a gentle and amiable man in the main, was extremely irritated by his failure. He put forth a second edition of his work, prefaced by a vindication, and tried to take vengeance on Johnson after his death by a sarcastic epitaph.[1] In 1776 Jenyns published his View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion. Though at one period of his life he had affected a kind of deistic scepticism, he had now returned to orthodoxy, and there seems no reason to doubt his sincerity, questioned at the time, in defending Christianity on the ground of its total variance with the principles of human reason. The work was deservedly praised in its day for its literary merits, but is so plainly the production of an amateur in theology that as a scientific treatise it is valueless.
A collected edition of the works of Jenyns appeared in 1790, with a biography by Charles Nalson Cole. There are several references to him in Boswell’s Johnson.
JEOPARDY, a term meaning risk or danger of death, loss or other injury. The word, in Mid. Eng. juparti, jeupartie, &c., was adapted from O. Fr. ju, later jeu, and parti, even game, in medieval Latin jocus partitus. This term was originally used of a problem in chess or of a stage in any other game at which the chances of success or failure are evenly divided between the players. It was thus early transformed to any state of uncertainty.
JEPHSON, ROBERT (1736–1803), British dramatist, was
born in Ireland. After serving for some years in the British
army, he retired with the rank of captain, and lived in England,
where he was the friend of Garrick, Reynolds, Goldsmith,
Johnson, Burke, Burney and Charles Townshend. His appointment
as master of the horse to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland
- ↑ Two lines will suffice:—
Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit,
Will tell you how he wrote, and talk’d, and cough’d, and spit.
