66 Proceedings of the Newport Natural History Society. 
those who survive, the tale is but that by Defoe, of Lon¬ 
don, during its awful visitation by the Plague; and as the 
great fire of London alone sufficed to prevent the repeti¬ 
tion of that pestilence, so it would seem that Gloucester 
will still have to be purged of its germs of the most repul¬ 
sive as well as the most fatal disease, by a general crema¬ 
tion of dwellings and their contents alike. The story is 
almost like that of Sodom and Gomorrah of old, for is it 
not wickedness thus to refuse such gifts of God? That 
those of the anti-vaccination leaders there who are still 
alive are acknowledging their mistake and urging all to 
general vaccination, cannot restore the hundreds they have 
caused to perish, cannot recall the myriad printed sheets 
of error that they have sent broadcast through the world, 
to mislead many minds, even in our own city of Newport. 
I have now shown you Jenner’s life as a naturalist. A 
few words more will complete my sketch. 
He was by inheritance, through several generations, a 
student. 
He was born into opportunity, for his birthplace was 
a district of dairies. His meeting the servant who thought 
cow-pox and small-pox incompatible with each other, instead 
of chance, would seem to have been but part of a God-created 
design. There occurring at the time in the herd this dis¬ 
ease, so very rare, spontaneously, was but another link in 
the chain. 
The prevalence and fatality of small-pox were not his 
only spurs to find its preventive. While still an apprentice, 
he had had personal experience of the great discomfort from 
the older practice of inoculation. “There was,” he says, 
“bleeding till the blood was thin; purging till the body 
was wasted to a skeleton, and starving on vegetable diet to 
keep it so.” 
His inborn love for natural history fixed his attention 
upon the diseases of the domestic animals. His subsequent 
training as a naturalist and natural philosopher fitted him 
for steps in his research which he otherwise could neither 
