The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915Various
Science
The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Besides enduring all these mental and physical worries, and the
annoyance that the Royal Jennerian Society established in 1802
was so mismanaged that it collapsed in 1808, Jenner had spent a
very large sum of private money on the introduction of
vaccination. He had been, as he himself expressed it, "Vaccine
clerk to the whole world." Parliament, it is true, in 1801,
voted him a sum of 10,000 pounds which was not paid for three
years afterwards and was diminished by 1,000 pounds deducted
for fees, so that it barely recompensed him for his outlays. By
1806, the immensity of the benefit conferred upon his diseased
fellow-creatures having been recognized more perfectly in every
other country than his own, the British Parliament woke up, and
voted him a sum of 20,000 pounds, only one member representing
the anti-vaccinators opposing the grant. Parliament, which had
previously received from the Colleges of Physicians of London,
Edinburgh and Dublin the most favorable reports of the efficacy
of vaccination, decided to reestablish the Royal Jennerian
Institute. A subscription of 7,383 pounds from grateful India
reached Jenner in 1812. In 1814 he was in London for the last
time, when he was presented to the Emperor of Russia, Alexander
I., who told him that he had very nearly subdued smallpox
throughout that vast Empire. Jenner refused a Russian order on
the ground that he was not a man of independent means.
The management of the Institute caused him much concern in his
later years; he disapproved of the personnel and of many of the
details of its working. One of the last worries of his life was
an article in the November number for 1822 of the famous
Edinburgh Review. Although it contained a good deal of praise,
it was not favorable to Jenner, who said of it, "I put it down
at 100,000 deaths at least." I have ascertained that this
article was not written by the celebrated Francis Jeffrey,
although he was editor of the Review until 1829.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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