By JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A.
(1749-1823)
[Illustration: Dr. Edward Jenner.]
Few 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; doubts, however, were removed, as a boy, who daily saw the
girl, fell ill and died, "having had a very bad small-pox of the
confluent sort." This is the first use of the word _vaccination_, or,
more familiarly, cow-pox, which is an eruption arising from the
insertion into the system of matter obtained from the eruption on the
teats and udders of cows, and especially in Gloucestershire; it is
also frequently denominated _vaccine matter_; and the whole affair,
inoculation and its consequences, is called vaccination, from the
Latin _vacca_, a cow.
It is admitted that Jenner's merit lay in the scientific application
of his knowledge of the fact that the chapped hands of milkers of cows
sometimes proved a preventive of small-pox, and from those of them
whom he endeavored to inoculate resisting the infection. These results
were probably known far beyond Jenner's range, and long before his
time; for we have respectable testimony of their having come within
the observation of a Cheshire gentleman, who had been informed of them
shortly after settling on his estate in Prestbury parish, in or about
1740. This does not in the least detract from Jenner's merit, but
shows that to his genius for observation, analogy, and experiment, we
are indebted for this application of a simple fact, only incidentally
remarked by others, but by Jenner rendered the stepping-stone to his
great discovery--or, in other words, extending its benefits from a
single parish in Gloucestershire to the whole world.
We agree with a contemporary, that, "among all the names which ought
to be consecrated by the gratitude of mankind, that of Jenner stands
pre-eminent. It would be difficult, we are inclined to say
impossible, to select from the catalogue of benefactors to human
nature an individual who has contributed so largely to the
preservation of life, and to the alleviation of suffering. Into
whatever corner of the world the blessing of printed knowledge has
penetrated, there also will the name of Jenner be familiar; but the
fruits of his discovery have ripened in barbarous soils, where books
have never been opened, and where the savage does not pause to
inquire from what source he has derived relief. No improvement in
the physical sciences can bear a parallel with that which ministers
in every part of the globe to the prevention of deformity, and, in a
great proportion, to the exemption from actual destruction."
The ravages which the small-pox formerly committed are scarcely
conceived or recollected by the present generation. An instance of
death occurring after vaccination is now eagerly seized and
commented upon; yet seventy years have not elapsed since this
disease might fairly be termed the scourge of mankind, and an enemy
more extensive and more insidious than even the plague. A family
blighted in its fairest hopes through this terrible visitation was
an every-day spectacle: the imperial House of Austria lost eleven of
its offspring in fifty years. This instance is mentioned because it
is historical; but in the obscure and unrecorded scenes of life this
pest was often a still more merciless intruder.
Edward Jenner was the third son of the Vicar of Berkeley, in
Gloucestershire, where he was born, May 17, 1749. Before he was nine
years of age he showed a growing taste for natural history, in
forming a collection of the nests of the dormouse; and when at
school at Cirencester he was fond of searching for fossils, 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 1773 he returned to his native village, and commenced
practice as a surgeon and apothecary, with great success.
Nevertheless, 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 observation of nature in homely
verse; and in 1788 he communicated to the Royal Society his curious
paper on the cuckoo. At the same time he carried to London 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
frequently 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 professional 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 gentlemen 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 disregarded the
subject, Jenner pursued it. He found at Berkeley that some persons,
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 individuals, and all with the same good
effect in preventing small-pox.
An opportunity occurred of making a trial of the latter on May 14,
1796 (a day still commemorated by the annual festival at Berlin),
when a boy, aged eight years, was vaccinated with matter from the
hands of a milkmaid; the experiment succeeded, and he was inoculated
for small-pox on July 1st following without the least effect. Dr.
Jenner then extended his experiments, and in 1798 published his
first memoir on the subject. He had originally intended to
communicate his results to the Royal Society, but was admonished not
to do so, lest it should injure the character which he had
previously acquired among scientific persons by his paper on the
natural history of the cuckoo. In the above work Dr. Jenner
announces the security against small-pox afforded by the true
cow-pox, and also traces the origin of that disease in the cow to a
similar affection of the heel of the horse.
The method, however, met with much opposition, until, in the
following year, thirty-three leading physicians and forty eminent
surgeons of London signed an earnest expression of their confidence
in the efficacy of the cow-pox. The royal family of England exerted
themselves to encourage Jenner; the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of
York, the king, the Prince of Wales, and the queen bestowed great
attention upon Jenner. The incalculable utility of cow-pox was at
last evinced; and observation and experience furnished evidence
enough to satisfy the Baillies and Heberdens, the Monros and
Gregorys of Britain, as well as the physicians of Europe, India, and
America. The new practice now began to supersede the old plan
pursued by the Small-pox Hospital, which had been founded for
inoculation. The two systems were each pursued until 1808, when the
hospital governors discontinued small-pox inoculation.
A committee of Parliament was now appointed to consider the claims
of Jenner upon the gratitude of his country. It was clearly proved
that he had converted into scientific demonstration a tradition of
the peasantry. Two parliamentary grants, of £10,000 and £20,000,
were voted to him. In 1808 the National Vaccine Establishment was
formed by Government, and placed under his direction. Honors were
profusely showered upon him by various foreign princes, as well as
by the principal learned bodies of Europe.
Dr. Jenner passed the remainder of his years principally at Berkeley
and at Cheltenham, continuing to the last, his inquiries on the
great object of his life. He died at Berkeley, in February, 1823, at
the green old age of seventy-four: his remains lie in the chancel of
the parish church of Berkeley. A marble statue by Sievier has been
erected to his memory in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral; and
another statue of him has been placed in a public building at
Cheltenham. Five medals have been struck in honor of Jenner: three
by the German nation; one by the surgeons of the British navy; and
the fifth by the London Medical Society.
[Illustration: The First Vaccination--Dr. Jenner.]
Dr. Jenner was endowed with a rare quality of mind, which it may be
both interesting and beneficial to sketch. A singular originality of
thought was his leading characteristic. He appeared to have
naturally inherited what in others is the result of protracted
study. He seemed to think from originality of perception alone,
and not from induction. He arrived by a glance at inferences which
would have occupied the laborious conclusions of most men. In human
and animal pathology, in comparative anatomy, and in geology, he
perceived facts and formed theories instantaneously, and with a
spirit of inventive penetration which distanced the slower
approaches of more learned men. But if his powers of mind were
singularly great, the qualities which accompanied them were still
more felicitous. He possessed the most singular amenity of
disposition with the highest feeling, the rarest simplicity united
to the highest genius. In the great distinction and the superior
society to which his discovery introduced him, the native cast of
his character was unchanged. Among the great monarchs of Europe,
who, when in Great Britain, solicited his acquaintance, he was the
unaltered Dr. Jenner of his birthplace. In the other moral points of
his character, affection, friendship, beneficence, and liberality
were pre-eminent In religion, his belief was equally remote from
laxity and fanaticism; and he observed to an intimate friend, not
long before his death, that he wondered not that the people were
ungrateful to him for his discovery, but he was surprised that they
were ungrateful to God for the benefits of which he was the humble
means.