400 



SOME GREAT NAMES IN BIOLOGY 



In the preceding chapters of this book we have learned some- 

 thing about our bodies and their care. We have found that man 

 is able within limitations to control his environment so as to make 

 it better to live in. All of the scientific facts that have been of 

 use to man in the control of disease have been found out by men 

 who have devoted their lives in the hope that their experiments 

 and their sacrifices of time, energy, and sometimes life itself might 

 make for the betterment of the human race. Such men were 

 Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Koch, and Pasteur. 



Edward Jenner and Vaccination. — The civilized world owes 

 much to Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination against 

 smallpox. Born in Berkeley, a little town of Gloucestershire, Eng- 

 land, in 1749, as a boy he 

 showed a strong liking for nat- 

 ural history. He studied medi- 

 cine and also gave much time to 

 the working out of biological 

 problems. As early as 1775 he 

 began to associate the disease 

 called cowpox with that of 

 smallpox, and gradually the 

 idea of inoculation against this 

 terrible scourge, which killed or 

 disfigured hundreds of thou- 

 sands every year in England 

 alone, was worked out and ap- 

 plied. He believed that if the 

 two diseases were similar, a per- 

 son inoculated with the mild 

 disease (cowpox) would after a 

 slight attack of this disease be 

 immune against the more deadly and loathsome smallpox. It was 

 not until 1796 that he was able to prove his theory, as at first few 

 people would submit to vaccination. War at this time was being 

 waged between France and England, so that the former country, 

 usually so quick to appreciate the value of scientific discoveries, was 

 slow to give this method a trial. In spite of much opposition, how- 



Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vac- 

 cination. 



