MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS 171 



as an epidemic over communities and carrying terror 

 and death in its path. Edward Jenner came from a 

 dairy county Gloucestershire of England where 

 a belief existed among the dairy people that persons 

 who had contracted cow-pox were immune from 

 small-pox. Cows are sometimes affected with a kind 

 of disease accompanied by watery pustules on the 

 udders, the hands of milkers become infected from 

 these, and, after a mild sickness, those individuals 

 were no longer susceptible to small-pox. It was the 

 quality of sagacity in Jenner that led him to make 

 use of this wide-spread belief and to investigate it 

 with the trained mind and the powers of a scientific 

 education. His discovery was a triumph of experi- 

 mental science. 



Edward Jenner, the discoverer (1749-1823) (Fig. 

 28) went to London at the age of twenty-one, in 

 1770, to pursue medical studies and came under the 

 tutelage of the famous Dr. John Hunter. He was 

 broadened by his contact with Hunter and by 

 studies of comparative anatomy in his extensive 

 museum. He attempted to interest Hunter in the 

 question of immunity from small-pox, but Hunter, 

 his preceptor, was too busily engaged with other 

 matters to give it serious attention. Accordingly, 



