Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/651

J E N N E R 623 nis profession iu his native place, and near his eldest brother, to whom lie was much attached. His speedy success in practice did not engross his intellectual activity. He was the principal founder of a local medical society, to which he contributed several papers of marked ability, in one of which he apparently anticipated later discoveries concern ing the rheumatic inflammations of the heart. He main tained a correspondence with John Hunter, under whose direction he investigated various points in biology, particu larly the hibernation of hedgehogs and the habits of the cuckoo ; his paper on the latter subject was laid by Hunter before the Royal Society, and appeared in the Philosophi cal Transactions for 1788. He also devoted considerable attention to the varied geological character of the district in which hs lived, collecting fossils from the Oolite and Lias, and constructed the first balloon seen in those parts. He was a great favourite in general society, from his agree able and instructive conversation, and the many accomplish ments he possessed. Thus he was a fair musician, both as a part-singer and as a performer on the violin and flute, and a very successful writer, after the fashion of that time, 1 of fugitive pieces of verse, one of which " The Signs of Rain " lias been frequently reprinted, and enumerates minutely all the signs of the weather in verse not un worthy of Crabbe. In 1788 he married Catherine Kings- cote, a union destined to form a most important element in his happiness. In 1792 he resolved to confine himself to practising as a physician, and accordingly obtained the degree of doctor of medicine from St Andrews. Finding that Berkeley could not support a physician, he began, a few years later, to visit Cheltenham annually. Meanwhile the discovery that was to immortalize his memory had been slowly maturing in his mind. When only an apprentice at Sodbury, his attention had been directed to the relations between cow-pox and small-pox in connexion with a popular belief which he found current in Gloucestershire, as to the antagonism between these two diseases. During his stay in London he appears to have mentioned the thing repeatedly to Hunter, who, being engrossed by other important pursuits, was not so strongly persuaded as Jenner was of its possible importance, yet spok-j of it to his friends and in his lectures. After he began prictice in Berkeley, Jenner was always accustomed to inquire what his professional brethren thought of it ; but he found that, when medical men had noticed the popular report at all, they supposed it to be based on an imperfect induction of facts. His first careful investigation of the subject dates from about 1775, and five years elapsed before he had succeeded in clearing away the most perplex ing difficulties by which it was surrounded. He first satis fied himself that two different forms of disease had been hitherto confounded under the term "cow-pox," only one of which protected against small-pox, and that many of the cases of failure were to be thus accounted for ; and his next step was to ascertain that the true cow-pox itself only protects when communicated at a particular stage of the disease. At the same time he came to the conclusion that " the grease " of horses is the same disease as cow-pox and small-pox, each being modified by the organism in which it was developed an opinion which is generally held at the present day. For many years, cow-pox being scarce in his county, he had no opportunity of inoculating the disease, and so putting his discovery to the test, but he did all he could in the way of collecting information and com municating what he had ascertained. Thus in 1788 he carried a drawing of the cow-pox, as seen on the hands of a milkmaid, to London, and showed it to Sir E. Home and others, who agreed that it was "an interesting and curious subject," but by no means realized its practical import ance. At length, on the 14th of May 1796, he was able to inoculate James Pliipps, a boy about eight years old, with cow-pox matter. On the first of the following July the boy was carefully inoculated with variolous matter, but (as Jenner had predicted) no small-pox followed. The dis covery was now complete, but he desired to act without precipitation, and was unable to repeat his experiment until 1798, owing to the disappearance of cow-pox from the dairies. He then repeated his inoculations with the utmost care, and prepared a pamphlet which should announce his discovery to the world. Before publishing it, however, he thought it well to visit London, so as to demonstrate the truth of his assertions to his friends ; but he remained in London nearly three months, without being able to find any person who would submit to be vaccinated. Soon after he had returned home, however, Mr Cline, an eminent surgeon, inoculated some vaccine matter over the diseased hip-joint of a child, thinking the counter-irritation might be "useful, and found the patient afterwards incapable of acquiring small-pox. In the autumn of the same year, Jenner met with the first opposition to vaccination ; and this was the more formidable because it proceeded from Dr Ingenhousz, a celebrated physician and man of science. But mean while Mr Cline s case, and his advocacy of vaccination, brought it much more decidedly before the medical pro fession, of whom the majority were prudent enough to suspend their judgment until they had more ample in formation. But besides these there were two noisy and troublesome factions, the one of which opposed vaccination as an useless and dangerous practice, while the other endangered its success much more by their rash and self- seeking advocacy. At the head of the latter was one Dr Pearson, who iu November 1798 published a pamphlet speculating upon the subject, before even seeing a case of cow-pox, and afterwards endeavoured, by lecturing on the subject, and supplying the virus, to put himself forward as the chief agent in the cause. The matter which he distri buted, which had been derived from cows that were found to be infected in London, was found frequently to produce, not the slight disease described by Jenner, but more or less severe eruptions resembling small-pox. Jenner concluded at once that this was due to an accidental contamination of the vaccine with variolous matter, and a visit to London in the spring of 1799 convinced him that this was the case. In the course of this year the practice of vaccination spread over England, being urged principally by non-professional persons of position ; and towards its close attempts were I made to found institutions for gratuitous vaccination and for supplying lymph to all who might apply for it. Pearson proposed to establish one of these in London, without Jenner s knowledge, in which he offered him the post of honorary corresponding physician ! On learning this scheme to supplant him, and to carry on an institution for public vaccination on principles which he knew to be partly erroneous, Jenner once more visited London early in 1800, when he had influence enough to secure the abandon znent of the project. He was afterwards pre sented to the king, the queen, and the prince of Wales, whose encouragement materially aided the spread of vac cination in England. Meanwhile it had made rapid pro gress in the United States, where it was introduced by Dr Waterhouse, the professor of physic at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and on the continent of Europe, where it was at first diffused by Dr de Carro of Vienna, who practised it with the greatest zeal and discretion, and thence spread to Geneva. In consequence of the war between England and France, the discovery was later in reaching Paris ; but, its importance once realized, it spread rapidly over France, Spain, and Italy. It would be tedious and unprofitable to dwell minutely on the extension of vaccination over the whole world ; but a few of the inci-