Dr. Edward Jenner, the inventor of vaccination, was born in Gloucestershire, in 1749, and, being educated for the medical profession, was placed under the immediate tuition of Mr. John Hunter, with whom he lived two years, as a house pupil. After finishing his studies in London, he settled at Berkeley. His inquiry into the nature of cow-pox commenced about the year 1776. His attention to this singular disease was first excited by observing, that among those whom he inoculated for the small-pox many were insusceptible of that disorder. These persons, he was informed, had undergone the casual cow-pox, which had been known in the dairies from time immemorial, and a vague opinion prevailed that it was a preventive of the small-pox. He instituted a series of experiments, and several persons were successively inoculated from each other with vaccine matter, and then exposed to the infection of small-pox, which they all resisted. When these facts were communicated to the world envy assailed his fame, his discovery was depreciated, then denied. Truth, however, ultimately prevailed, vaccination obtained a complete triumph, and the foes of Jenner and humanity were covered with confusion. Dr. Mosely, one of his opponents, asks if any person can say, “What may be the consequences of introducing a _bestial humour_ into the human frame, after a long lapse of years?” He was asked, in return, “What may be the consequences, after a long lapse of years, of introducing into the human frame cow’s milk, beefsteaks, or a mutton-chop?” Dr. Jenner had numerous presents of plate, &c., honours were conferred on him by different societies; and a grant of ten thousand pounds was voted to him by Parliament. The phenomena of Animal Magnetism, when announced to the world, excited the greatest sensation on the Continent, particularly in France; for some years the subject filled their “Journals” and “Mercuries,” and employed some of their best pens and brightest wits. M. Mesmer, the inventor, was a native of Switzerland, of great talents, but enthusiastic fancy. He undertook to defend the old doctrine of the influence of the planets on the human frame, and he searched for some means of communication between them. Electricity did not answer his expectations, and he turned his attention to magnetism. Iron becomes magnetic after being rubbed with a magnet; he therefore rubbed the human body with the loadstone. The phenomena which resulted he attributed, at first, to the magnetic influence; but experience proved to him that the application of the bare hand produced the same effect, yet he called this animal magnetism.