206 



DISCOVERY 



CH. 



nur wenige frei from smallpox and love few remain 

 free. In his History of England, Macaulay, referring to 

 the death of Queen Mary from the disease in 1694 says : 



That disease over which science has since achieved a succession 

 of glorious and beneficial victories was then the most terrible of 

 all the ministers of death. The havoc of the plague had been 

 far more rapid ; but plague had visited our shores only once or 

 twice within living memory, and the smallpox was always 

 present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with 

 constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving 

 on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its 

 power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother 

 shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed 

 maiden objects of horror to the lover. T. B. Macaulay. 



For the different conditions which exist in civilised 

 countries to-day, and for the fact that the fear of small- 

 pox has become almost as remote as the fear of leprosy, 

 we have chiefly to thank Edward Jenner (1749-1823) 

 the apostle of vaccination. Others had vaccinated 

 before Jenner, but he was the first to rouse the. civilised 

 world to take an active interest in the subject. Among 

 medical men of all nationalities his' name is held in the 

 highest reverence. Jenner, Pasteur and Lister form 

 a triumvirate that has given the human race reason to 

 rise up and call it blessed. 



The value of vaccination as a protection against 

 smallpox was established by Jenner in 1796; the 

 principle of the method of protective inoculation was 

 used by Pasteur in conferring immunity of animals from 

 anthrax eighty-five years later ; and Lister was led to 

 introduce the system of antiseptic surgery by the study 

 of Pasteur's investigations. Jenner opened the door 

 to a new realm of remedies for disease ; and we are only 

 now beginning to realise how vast it is and what possi- 

 bilities it offers for the future. 



