Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/276

254 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. man who works for the benefit of his fellow- beings can afford to await the hour allotted for the full development of his labours, and bequeaths, in tranquil confidence, to posterity the reputation which he may have failed to obtain from a domi- nant coterie of capricious contemporaries. The father of Jenner was vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, the possessor of considerable landed property, and a member of a family of great antiquity in that county and Worcester- shire. Edward Jenner, his third son, the illus- trious subject of our memoir, was born in the vicarage on the 17th of May, 1749. Before Edward was nine years of age he mani- fested a growing taste for natural history in form- ing a collection of the nests of the dormouse ; and when at Cirencester, he spent the hours, devoted by the other pupils of Dr. Washbourn's school to play, in searching for the fossils which abound in that neighbourhood. He was removed from this seminary to Sudbury, near Bristol, in order to be instructed in the elements of surgery and pharmacy by Mr. Ludlow, a person of eminence in his profession. When he had completed his apprenticeship to this gentleman, he came to London, to pursue his studies under the care of John Hunter, in whose house he resided, as a pupil, during two years. Jenner was, on his arrival in London, in the twenty-first year of his age, and John Hunter was now in his forty- second. This difierence of age did not prevent the formation of a real friendship ; a community of tastes and pursuits united them to the last ; and Jenner could not fail to profit by the many oppor-