Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/93

DR. EDWARD JENNER 263 m the beginning of 1 8 19 (he was then eighty-three), describes him as so full of anecdote, that he spent one of the most amusing days he had ever had with him. Lord Brougham, later still, in the summer of the same year, found his instructive conversation and his lively and even playful manner unchanged. But in the au- tumn of this year, on August 19th, he expired tranquilly at his house at Heath- field. He was buried at Handsworth. A tribute to his memory was but tardily rendered by the nation. Jeffrey and Arago added more elaborate tributes to Watt's genius ; and Wordsworth has declared that he looked upon him, considering his magnitude and universality, " as perhaps the most extraordinary man that this country has ever produced." His noblest monument is, however, his own work. DR. EDWARD JENNER By John Timbs, F.S.A. F" (1 749-1823) ew of the many thousand ills which human flesh is heir to, have spread such devastation among the family of man as small-pox. Its universality has ranged from the untold tribes of savages to the silken baron of civilization ; and its ravages on life and beauty have been shown in many a sad tale of domestic suffering. To stay the destroying hand of such a scourge, which by some has been identified with the Plague of Athens, was reserved for Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination. The great fact can, however, be traced half a century before Jenner's time. In the journal of John Byron, F.R.S., under date June 3, 1725, it is recorded that : " At a meeting of the Royal Society, Sir Isaac Newton presiding, Dr. Jurin read a case of small-pox, where a girl who had been inoculated and had been vaccinated, was tried and had them not again ; but another [a] boy, caught the small-pox from this girl, and had the confluent kind and died." This case occurred at Hanover. The inoculation of the girl seems to have failed entirely ; it was suspected that she had not taken the true small-pox