means for scientific inquiry by the reception of pupils, caring much more for his menagerie at Brompton than for patients, and utilising his pupils as assistants in his researches. Captain Cook returned from his first voyage of discovery in 1771, and his collection of specimens of natural history was assigned to Hunter for arrangement, who set Jenner to work upon them; and, it is said, he did his duty so well that he was offered the appointment of naturalist in Cook's next expedition. Jenner was, however, eager to commence business as country surgeon, and in 1772, at the age of 23, he returned to his native vale, legally qualified by his experience at Sodbury, and his two years with Hunter, to practise at discretion on the good folk of Berkeley.

It may be said that Jenner's was a poor sort of training for a medical man, but it is to be questioned if he lost much by his ignorance; for a century ago medical knowledge was largely absurdity, and practice mischief; and he did best who stood most frequently helpless in the presence of Nature. Sir Benjamin Brodie relates how he served when a young man with a general practitioner near Leicester Square

His treatment of disease seemed to be very simple. He had in his shop five large bottles, which were labelled Mistura Salina, Mistura Cathartica, Mistura Astringens, Mistura Cinchone, and another, of which I forget the name, but it was some kind of white emulsion for coughs; and it seemed to me that out of these five bottles he prescribed for two-thirds of his patients. I do not, however, set this down to his discredit; for I have observed that while young members of the medical profession generally deal in a great variety of remedies, they commonly discard the greater number of them as they grow older, until at last their treatment of diseases becomes almost as simple as that of my Esculapius of Little Newport Street.*

Hunter's name is often used as a sort of consecration of Jenner, but for no obvious reason. Hunter confirmed, if he did not beget in Jenner a strong liking for natural history; and when Jenner was settled in the country, he often availed himself of his services as observer and

collector, writing to him for information about the habits of the cuckoo, the breeding of toads and frogs, and the sexes of eels; for cuckoos' stomachs, crows and magpies' nests, for bats, hedgehogs, black birds, lizards, hares, and fossils; for a cock salmon, for salmon spawn and fry, for a large porpoise, "for love or money;" for the arm of a certain patient when he dies; suggesting horrible experiments on hedgehogs, bats, and dogs, and describing one of special atrocity upon an ass. The most serious proposition in their correspondence was that Jenner should come to London as a teacher of natural history, but Hunter threw out the suggestion with hesitation, the qualification for the appointment being 1000 guineas down. Jenner had improved, or supposed he had improved, the preparation of tartar emetic, and Hunter

wrote

DEAR JENNER,-I am puffing off your tartar as the tartar of all tartars, and have given it to several physicians to make a trial of, but as yet have had no account of their success. Had you not better let a bookseller have it to sell, as Glass of Oxford did his magnesia? Let it be called Jenner's Tartar Emetic, or anybody's else you please.

Hunter died in 1793, and there is no evidence that Jenner submitted to his judgment the question of Vaccination, if even we allow that prior to that date the project had occurred to Jenner himself. It is certain that he mentioned to Hunter that country folk believed that to catch cowpox was to be secure from smallpox, and that Hunter repeated the fact in his conversation and lectures; but there is no reference to the matter in Hunter's writing and correspondence.

It is the habit of Jenner's admirers to represent him as a patient investigator to whom a great thought dawned in boyhood, which was brought forth in the maturity of life. In conformity with this legend, it is related that when an apprentice at Sodbury, a young woman came to his master's surgery, and smallpox being mentioned, she said, "I cannot take that disease, for I have had cowpox;"

and her observation was pondered in his heart; whereon Dr. Baron, his biographer, ecstatically launches forth

Newton had unfolded his doctrine of light and colours before he was twenty: Bacon wrote his Temporis Partus Maximus before he attained that age: Montesquieu had sketched his Spirit of Laws at an equally early period of life: and Jenner, when he was still younger, contemplated the possibility of removing from among the list of human diseases one of the most mortal that ever scourged The hope of doing this great good never deserted him, though he met with many discouragements; his notions having been treated with scorn and ridicule by some, and with indifference by almost all.

our race.

Against such a paragraph we may write, Sheer romance! Jenner was by no means reticent, and that the prevention of smallpox was for any length of time the burden of his soul, nowhere appears. The romance came into being after date in order to make much of little, and to justify payment in cash and reputation. For, taking Vaccination at the utmost, it was a slight advance upon existent knowledge and practice. In the first place, it was a notorious belief in many dairy districts, that to contract cowpox was equivalent to smallpox in averting a subsequent attack of smallpox. In the second place, inoculation with smallpox was the custom of the time; and if infection with cowpox prevented smallpox, why should not inoculation with cowpox do so as effectually as inoculation with smallpox? The intelligence requisite to reach a conclusion so obvious was not great, and therefore it was no cause for surprise that when Jenner's claim as originator of Vaccination was brought forward, his priority should be disputed from several quarters; as by Benjamin Jesty of Yetminster, who inoculated his wife and sons with cowpox in 1774; by Nash of Shaftesbury; Mrs. Rendall, and others. Jenner was not insensible to the force of these claims, but evaded them under the plea that there was cowpox and cowpox, and that he had discovered and defined the right sort.

In parts of Holstein, too, cowpox was regarded as good against smallpox, and on more than one occasion was deliberately employed for the purpose. Plett, a village

schoolmaster, near Kiel, inoculated three children with the disease in 1791, who were afterwards credited with resisting variolous infection in consequence of their vaccination.*

How thoroughly the asserted prophylaxy of cowpox was known, Jenner himself was accustomed to bear witness. He was a member of two clubs, the MedicoConvivial which met at Rodborough, and the ConvivioMedical which met at Alveston; and he used to bring cowpox so persistently under discussion, that, he said, he was threatened with expulsion if he did not desist. "We know," said the jovial doctors, "that an attack of cowpox is reputed to prevent smallpox, but we know that it does not, and that should end the matter."+

In pursuance of the tactics that would represent Vaccination as the outcome of the labour of many years, we have the following extraordinary narrative from Baron, Jenner's biographer

It was not till 1780 that Jenner was enabled, after much study and inquiry, to unravel many of the perplexing obscurities and contradictions with which the question of cowpox was enveloped, and which had impressed those who knew the traditions of the country with the opinion that it defied all accurate and satisfactory elucidation. In the month of May of the year just mentioned, 1780, he first disclosed his hopes and his fears, respecting the great object of his pursuit, to his friend Edward Gardner. By this time Jenner's mind had caught a glimpse of the reputation which awaited him, but it was still clouded by doubts and difficulties. He then seemed to feel that it might, in God's good providence, be his lot to stand between the living and the dead, and that through him a plague might be stayed. On the other side, the dread of disappointment, and the probability of failing to accomplish his purpose, restrained that eagerness which otherwise would have prompted him prematurely to publish the result of his inquiries, and thereby, probably, by conveying insufficient knowledge, blight forever his favourite hope.‡

Many are the marvellous relations in ancient and modern history, but in the records of the supernatural it is questionable if there be anything to match the pre

* Simon's Papers on Vaccination, p. xii.

+ Baron's Life of Jenner, vol. i. pp. 48 and 126. ‡ Ib., vol. i. p. 127.

ceding. Painters depict the runaway apprentice listening on Highgate Hill to the bells as they pealed, “Turn again Whittington, twice Lord Mayor of London," but they might find a finer subject in the young Gloucestershire surgeon, aged 31, habited "in blue coat and yellow buttons, buckskins, well polished jockey boots with handsome silver spurs, a smart whip with silver handle, and hair done up in a club under a broadbrimmed hat,"* with eye fixed in vision, contemplating his glorious destiny, through clouds of doubt and difficulty, full twenty years ahead; standing like another Aaron, censer in hand, between the living and the dead until the plague was stayed! Verily, if we do not see miracles, it is because we do not choose to look for them.

The chapter of the wonderful is not exhausted; yet greater things remain. Says Baron, and recollect the year was 1780 and Jenner aged 31

Jenner was riding with Gardner, on the road between Gloucester and Bristol, near Newport, when the conversation passed of which I have made mention. He went over the natural history of cowpox; stated his opinion as to the origin of this affection from the heel of the horse; specified the different sorts of disease which attacked the milkers when they handled infected cows; dwelt upon the variety which afforded protection against smallpox; and with deep and anxious emotion mentioned his hope of being able to propagate that variety from one human being to another, till he had disseminated the practice all over the globe, to the total extinction of smallpox "

Which is to say, that in 1780, Jenner, aged 31, had arrived at the conclusion which he offered to the world in 1798 at the mature age of 49; and in the meanwhile allowed mankind to perish from smallpox, he having their salvation in his hands!

The miraculous conversation, says Baron, was concluded by Jenner in words to the following effect—

Gardner, I have entrusted a most important matter to you, which I firmly believe will prove of essential benefit to the human race. I know you, and should not wish what I have stated to be

* Thus described by Gardner. Baron's Life of Jenner, p. 15.