Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/95

DR. EDWARD JENNER 265 which abound in that neighborhood. He was articled to a surgeon at Sudbury, near Bristol, and at the end of his apprenticeship came to London, and studied under John Hunter, with whom he resided as a pupil for two years and formed a lasting friendship with that great man. In 1 773 he returned to his native village, and commenced practice as a surgeon and apothecary, with great success. Nev- ertheless, he abstracted from the fatigues of country practice sufficient time to form a museum of specimens of comparative anatomy and natural history. He was much liked, was a man of lively and simple humor, and loved to tell his ob- servation o( nature in homely verse ; and in 1 788 he communicated to the Royal Society his curious paper on the cuckoo. At the same time he carried to Lon- don a drawing of the casual disease, as seen on the hands of the milkers, and showed it to Sir Everard Home and to others. John Hunter had alluded fre- quently to the fact in his lectures ; Dr. Adams had heard of the cow-pox both from Hunter and Clive, and mentions it in his " Treatise on Poisons," published in 1795, three years previous to Jenner's own publication. Still, no one had the courage or the penetration to prosecute the inquiry except Jenner. Jenner now resolved to confine his practice to medicine, and obtained, in 1792, a degree of M.D. from the University of St. Andrew's. We now arrive at the great event of Jenner's life. While pursuing his pro- fessional education in the house of his master at Sudbury, a young countrywoman applied for advice ; and the subject of small-pox being casually mentioned, she remarked she could not take the small-pox because she had had cow-pox ; and he then learnt that it was a popular notion in that district, that milkers who had been infected with a peculiar eruption which sometimes occurred on the udder of the cow, were completely secure against the small-pox. The medical gentle- men of the district told Jenner that the security which it gave was not perfect; and Sir George Baker, the physician, treated it as a popular error. But Jenner thought otherwise ; and although John Hunter and other eminent surgeons dis- regarded the subject, Jenner pursued it. He found at Berkeley that some per- sons, to whom it was impossible to give small-pox by inoculation, had had cow- pox ; but that others who had had cow-pox yet received small-pox. This led to the doctor's discovery that the cow was subject to a certain eruption, which had the power of guarding from small-pox ; and next, that it might be possible to propagate the cow-pox, and with it security from the small-pox, first from the cow to the human body, and thence from one person to another. Here, then, was an important discovery, that matter from the cow, intentionally inserted into the body, gave a slighter ailment than when received otherwise, and yet had the same effect of completely preventing small-pox. But of what advantage was it for mankind that the cows of Gloucestershire possessed a matter thus singularly powerful? How were persons living at a distance to derive benefit from this great discovery? Dr. Jenner, having inoculated several persons from a cow, took the matter from the human vesicles thus produced, and inoculated others, and others from them again ; thus making it pass in succession through many individ- uals, and all with the same good effect in preventing small-pox.