JENNER, jen'er, Edward, English physi cian, discoverer of vaccination as a preventive of the smallpox : b. Berkeley, Gloucestershire, 17 May 1749; d. there, 26 Jan. 1823. Having adopted the medical profession, he visited Lon don to attend the lectures of the celebrated anatomist, John Hunter, in whose family he re sided for two years. Returning to the country, he settled at Berkeley to practise his profession. His investigations concerning the cowpox were commenced about 1776, when his attention was excited by the circumstance of finding that some individuals to whom he attempted to com municate the smallpox by inoculation were not susceptible to the disease; and on inquiry he found that all such patients, though they had never had the smallpox, had undergone the casual cowpox, a disease common among the farmers and dairy-servants in Gloucestershire, who had some idea of its preventive effect. Other medi cal men were aware of the prevalence of this opinion but treated it as a popular prejudice; and Jenner seems to have been the first who ascertained its correctness, and endeavored to derive from it some practical advantage. He discovered that the vaccine, or cowpox, as the complaint has been since termed, could be propagated from one human subject to an other by inoculation, rendering all who passed through it secure from the smallpox. In 1798
he published a short treatise — 'An Inquiry into the Cause and Effecti of the Variole Vaccines& — and in July 1798, Cline, surgeon to Saint Thomas' Hospital, introduced vaccination into that institution. The practice was adopted in the army and navy and in the country gener ally, and soon spread to other countries, and honors and rewards were conferred on the au thor of the discovery. In 1802 a parliamentary grant was made to him of the sum of and five years later a second grant of f20,000. Besides the treatise already mentioned, and 'Further Observations on the Variole Vaccine or Cow-Pox' (1799) Jenner also published vari ous letters and papers on the same subject, as well as on others. A famous paper of his on the cuckoo appeared in the (Philosophical Transactions' in 1788. Consult Baron, 'Life of Jenner); Creighton, 'Jenner and Vaccination' (1889) ; Crookshanks 'History and Pathology of Vaccination' (1890). The last-named work contains reprints of the 'Inquiry,' the 'Further Observations,' and other papers by Jenner. See VACCINATION.