Page:Self-help with illustrations of conduct and perseverance (IA selfhelpwithillu00smiliala).pdf/205

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Chap. v]
DR. JENNER—VACCINATION
165

and that the countenance was gradually "transmuted into the visage of a cow, the voice into the bellowing of bulls." Vaccination, however, was a truth, and notwithstanding the violence of the opposition, belief in it spread slowly. In one village, where a gentleman tried to introduce the practice, the first persons who permitted themselves to be vaccinated were absolutely pelted and driven into their houses if they appeared out of doors. Two ladies of title—Lady Ducie and the Countess of Berkeley—to their honour be it remembered—had the courage to vaccinate their children; and the prejudices of the day were at once broken through. The medical profession gradually came round, and there were several who even sought to rob Dr. Jenner of the merit of the discovery, when its importance came to be recognized. Jenner's cause at last triumphed, and he was publicly honoured and rewarded. In his prosperity he was as modest as he had been in his obscurity. He was invited to settle in London, and told that he might command a practice of 10,000l. a year. But his answer was, "No! In the morning of my days I have sought the sequestered and lowly paths of life—the valley, and not the mountain,—and now, in the evening of my days, it is not meet for me to hold myself up as an object for fortune and for fame.". During Jenner's own lifetime the practice of vaccination became adopted all over the civilized world; and when he died, his title as a benefactor of his kind was recognized far and wide. Cuvier has said, "If vaccine were the only discovery of the epoch, it would serve to render it illustrious for ever; yet it knocked twenty times in vain at the doors of the Academies."