Edward Jenner as Naturalist. 
45 
influenced the moulding of his character, preparing him to 
become one of the most eminent physicians and one of the 
most pronounced benefactors of his race that have ever 
lived. Dr. Turner will have discoursed to you upon Jenner 
as the maker of an epoch, in general as well as in medical 
history. Dr. Rankin will have convinced you that vacci¬ 
nation rests upon no mere theory, and that its blessings 
outweigh ten thousand fold the very occasional complications 
from constitutional taint in the infant, or carelessness in 
the preparation of the virus, that may attend its use. It 
is for me to speak to you of Jenner from his ordinarily 
unappreciated standpoint of Naturalist, and to show you 
that, had it not been for his innate bent in this direction, 
the very unusual opportunities that he had for observation 
and experiment, and the exceptional mental training that 
he received from one of the most profound and philosoph¬ 
ical natural historians that any age has ever produced, his 
great discovery had never, by him at least, been reached. 
To give you the various clues to his permanent two-fold 
trend of thought, dependent upon which was all that he 
afterwards accomplished, it is necessary that I take you 
briefly over ground that Dr. Turner has already partially 
occupied. I have to do so, however, that I may show you, 
and combine together, the various influences that controlled 
his mind. Approached from different directions, the most 
apparently insignificant points are sometimes found to be¬ 
come the really dominant elements, whether in a landscape 
or in a man. 
Edward Jenner came of an ancient and very respectable 
family that had long been prominent both in Gloucestershire 
and Worcestershire. 
One of his ancestors was Rev. Dr. Thomas Jenner, 
President of Magdalen College, Oxford, in the latter part 
of the seventeenth century. 
His father, Rev. Stephen Jenner, A. M. of the Univer¬ 
sity of Oxford, was Rector of Rockhampton, and Vicar of 
Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and died five years after the 
