JENNER, EDWARD (1749-1823), English physician and discoverer of vaccination, was born at Berkeley, Gloucestershire, on the 17th of May 1749. His father, the Rev. Stephen Jenner, rector of Rockhampton and vicar of Berkeley, came of a family that had been long established in that county, and was possessed of considerable landed property; he died when Edward was only six years old, but his eldest son, the Rev. Stephen Jenner, brought his brother up with paternal care and tenderness. Edward received his early education at Wotton-under-Edge and Cirencester, where he already showed a strong taste for natural history. The medical profession having been selected for him, he began his studies under Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon of Sodbury near Bristol; but in his twenty-first year he proceeded to London, where he became a favourite pupil of John Hunter, in whose house he resided for two years. During this period he was employed by Sir Joseph Banks to arrange and prepare the valuable zoological specimens which he had brought back from Captain Cook's first voyage in 1771. He must have acquitted himself satisfactorily in this task, since he was offered the post of naturalist in the second expedition, but declined it as well as other advantageous offers, preferring rather to practise his profession in his native place, and near his eldest brother, to whom he was much attached. He was the principal founder of a local medical society, to which he contributed several papers of marked ability, in one of which he apparently anticipated later discoveries concerning rheumatic inflammations of the heart. He maintained a correspondence with John Hunter, under whose direction he investigated various points in biology, particularly the hibernation of hedgehogs and habits of the cuckoo; his paper on the latter subject was laid by Hunter before the Royal Society, and appeared in the _Phil. Trans._ for 1788. He also devoted considerable attention to the varied geological character of the district in which he lived, and constructed the first balloon seen in those parts. He was a great favourite in general society, from his agreeable and instructive conversation, and the many accomplishments he possessed. Thus he was a fair musician, both as a part singer and as a performer on the violin and flute, and a very successful writer, after the fashion of that time, of fugitive pieces of verse. In 1788 he married Catherine Kingscote, and in 1792 he obtained the degree of doctor of medicine from St Andrews.