' The origin of Dr. J diner's digtov ery is one of those tilings that every i one professes to know all about, and yot few really remember. i Just now it is worth while to tell the story, especially as it can bo told In a few words Smallpox when Jeiiner made his first experiments was a terrible and universal scourge; in London alone (or every thousand deaths, a hund red were smallpox cases and men and women, horribly pitted with the dis ease were numerous in all classes of society. It came to Dr. .Tenner's knowledge that in certain districts of Glouces tershire, persons engaged in lending cows were liable to infection from a disease of the udder, which they call cow-pock, and persons so suffering j I never caught smallpox. | *««♦«» Investigating what some would ; i have regarded,as "an old wife's 'talc" he found that it. was so, and 1 it occurred to him to inoculate per sons with cowpox as a preventive of: the dire and dreadful plague of small, ! pox. One of the chief ventures was j | to take the mailer from the hands, i of a woman who had caught cowpox ■ He inserted it into the arm of. a , healthy boy of eight, who suffered from Ihe disease in the ordinary, more or less harmless way of cow- , pox. Six weeks afterwards he inoc- 1 ulatcd this boy with the smallpox poison in several places, but no dis- I ease followed the operation, | Upon this, ilcnner began to talk and work, and make known his the- I ory and practice of vaccination as a preventive, and smallpox began to decline from 100 deaths in a thous and to 88, and so on, becoming less and less in every decade, until with free vaccination in JB(>7, it fell to 11 in a thousand. At the present time, in spite of the recent outbreak (owing largely to the neglect of vaccination among sceptics), it is hut a fractional per centage of the dcathratc. Greater cleanliness and a belter knowledge of hygiene have no doubt helped lo slump out the disease ; but of the blessings wf Dr. .Jenncr's discovery the whole world bears witness.
