JENNER, EDWARD, M.D., was born in 1749, at Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, of which place his father was vicar. He was educated at Cirencester, and apprenticed to Mr. Ludlow, a surgeon at Sudbury. At the conclusion of his apprenticeship he went to London, and became a pupil of John Hunter, with whom he resided for two years while studying medicine at St. George's Hospital, and with whom his philo sophical habits of mind and his love of natural history procured him an intimate and lasting friendship. In 1773 ho returned to his native village, and practised as a surgeon and apothecary till 1792, when he determined to confine himself to medicine, and obtained the degree of M.D. at St. Andrews University.
But the history of Jenner's professional life is embodied In that of vaccination. While at Sudbury he was surprised one day at hearing a countrywoman say that she could not take the smallpox because she had had cowpox ; and upon inquiry he learned 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 smallpox. The medical men of the district told him that the security which it gave was not perfect; they had long known the opinion, and it had been communicated to Sir George Baker, but he neglected it as a popular error. Jenner, during his pupilage, repeatedly mentioned' the facts, which had from the first made a deep impression on him, to John Hunter, but even he disregarded them ; and all to whom the subject was broached either alighted or ridiculed it. Jenner however still pursued it ; ho found, when in practice at Berkeley, that there were some persons to whom it was impossible to give smallpox by inoculation, and that all these had had cowpox ; but that there were others who had had cowpox, and who yet received smallpox. This, after much labour, led him to the discovery that the cow was subject to a variety of eruptions, of which one only had the power of guarding from smallpox, and that this (which he called the true cowpox) could be effectually communi cated to the milkers at only one period of its courso.
If was about 1780 that the idea first struck him that it might be possible to propagate the cowpox, and with it the security from smallpox, first from the cow to the human body, and thence from one person to another. In 1788 be carried a drawing of the casual dis ease, as seen on the hands of milkers, to London, and showed it to Hunter, Cline, and others; but still none would either assist or en courage him ; scepticism or ridicule met him everywhere, and it was not till 1796 that he made the decisive experiment. On the 14th of May a boy, aged eight years, was vaccinated with matter taken from the hands of a milkmaid ; he passed through the disorder In a satin factory manner, and was inoculated for smallpox on the 1st of July following without the least effect. Jenner then entered on an exten
sive series of experiments of the same kind, and in 1798 published his first memoir, ' An Enquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolas Vaccinte.' It excited the greatest interest, for the evidence in it seemed conclusive ; yet the practice met with opposition, as severe as it was unfair, and its success seemed uocertain till a year had passed, when upwards of seventy of the principal physicians and surgeons In London signed a declaration of their entire confidence in it. An attempt was then made to deprive Jenuer of the merit of his discovery, but it signally failed, and Ecientitio honours were bestowed upon him from all quarters. Nothing however could induce him to leave his village, and all his correspondence shows that the purest benevolence, rather than ambition, had been the motive which actuated all his labours. "Shall I," ho says in a letter to a friend, "who, even in the morning .of my life, sought the lowly and sequestered paths of life, the valley and not the mountain—shall I, now my evening is fast approaching, hold myself up as an object for fortune and for fame ? My fortune, with what flows in from my profession, le amply sufficient to gratify my wishes." Till the last day of his life, which terminated suddenly in 1823. be was °coupled in the most anxious labours to the advantages of his discovery both at home and abroad ; and he had the satisfaction of knowing that vaccination had even then shed its bloseings over every civilised nation of the world, prolongiog life, and preventing the ravage' of the most terrible scourge to which the human race was subject.
Jenner's other works all evince the same patient and philosophical spirit which led him to his great discovery. The chief of thorn was a paper ' On the Natural History of the Cuckoo,' in which ho first described that bird's habit of laying its eggs singly in the nests of smaller species, to whom it leaves the °Moe of incubation and of rearing the young one, which, when a few days old, acquires the sole possession of the neat by the expulsion of its rightful occupants. Indeed ho gained so much credit by this riper, that he was recom mended not to send his account of vaccination to the same society, lest it should injure the scientific reputation which he had already obtained.
The life of Jenner has been written by his friend Dr. Baron of Gloucester, in 2 vols. 8vo. Five medals have been struck in his honour, of which three were produced in Germany, and a statue is erected to him in his native county. But it is remarkable that the only public testimonials awarded by his country to the man whose unaided intellect and industry have added more years to the lives of men than the united labours of any century, were grants of 10,000/. and 20,0001., which were voted to him by the House of Commons in 1S02 and 1807.