A History of Science — Volume 4Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 4
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
the lips, nostrils, eyelids, and other parts of the body are sometimes
affected with sores; but these evidently arise from their being
heedlessly rubbed or scratched by the patient's infected fingers. No
eruptions on the skin have followed the decline of the feverish symptoms
in any instance that has come under my inspection, one only excepted,
and in this case a very few appeared on the arms: they were very
minute, of a vivid red color, and soon died away without advancing to
maturation, so that I cannot determine whether they had any connection
with the preceding symptoms.
"Thus the disease makes its progress from the horse (as I conceive) to
the nipple of the cow, and from the cow to the human subject.
"Morbid matter of various kinds, when absorbed into the system, may
produce effects in some degree similar; but what renders the cow-pox
virus so extremely singular is that the person that has been thus
affected is forever after secure from the infection of small-pox,
neither exposure to the variolous effluvia nor the insertion of the
matter into the skin producing this distemper."(2)
In 1796 Jenner made his first inoculation with cowpox matter, and two
months later the same subject was inoculated with small-pox matter. But,
as Jenner had predicted, no attack of small-pox followed. Although fully
convinced by this experiment that the case was conclusively proven, he
continued his investigations, waiting two years before publishing his
discovery. Then, fortified by indisputable proofs, he gave it to the
world. The immediate effects of his announcement have probably never
been equalled in the history of scientific discovery, unless, perhaps,
in the single instance of the discovery of anaesthesia. In Geneva and
Holland clergymen advocated the practice of vaccination from their
pulpits; in some of the Latin countries religious processions were
formed for receiving vaccination; Jenner's birthday was celebrated as
a feast in Germany; and the first child vaccinated in Russia was named
"Vaccinov" and educated at public expense. In six years the discovery
had penetrated to the most remote corners of civilization; it had even
reached some savage nations. And in a few years small-pox had fallen
from the position of the most dreaded of all diseases to that of being
practically the only disease for which a sure and easy preventive was
known.
Honors were showered upon Jenner from the Old and the New World, and
even Napoleon, the bitter hater of the English, was among the others who
honored his name. On one occasion Jenner applied to the Emperor for the
release of certain Englishmen detained in France. The petition was about
to be rejected when the name of the petitioner was mentioned. "Ah," said
Napoleon, "we can refuse nothing to that name!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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