here is nothing new under the sun, we are told on the highest authority, and the modern discovery of vaccination gives countenance to the proverb; for though popularly supposed to have originated with Dr. Jenner, in the end of the 18th century, it is now known to have been understood and practised in the earliest ages by the natives of India and Persia, and other countries of the East. Not only so, but Humboldt found during his researches in South America, that there prevailed among the inhabitants the belief that the eruption on the udder of the cow preserved them from small-pox. This in no way, however, detracts from the merit of Dr. .Tenner's discovery, which was arrived at without any knowledge on his part of its early history, and was the fruit of acute and accurate observation, patient investigation, careful experiment, and brilliant deduction. By this discovery Dr. Jenner immediately became the foremost benefactor of his age, and indeed we question if any single discovery ever conferred such a blessing on suffering humanity. His own generation, which had too often witnessed the ravages of small-pox, gave him his full meed of praise, and if we are less sensible at the present day of the benefits of vaccination, this is the strongest proof that could be adduced in its favour, as our indifference arises chiefly from the circumstance that few of us have ever seen, much less suffered from this dreadful disease. As, however, a knot of ignorant and presumptuous busybodies has of late attempted to destroy public faith in vaccination, and so far succeeded in evasion of the vaccination laws as to have made small pox endemic in London, we think we shall be doing the State some service by narrating in popular form the story of vaccination, proving its successes, and refuting alleged objections to the practice. We do this all the more readily from our knowledge that vaccination is constantly evaded in New Zealand, and very often imperfectly performed, so that should small-pox ever get footing amongst us, its effects would undoubtedly be most severe.

In order to convey to our readers some adequate notion of the ravages committed by small-pox before the era of vaccination, we may be permitted a quotation from the late Lord Macaulay's history. This historian describes it as "the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the plague had been far more rapid; but the page 4 plague had visited our shores only once or twice within living memory, but the small-pox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover."

The asylums, workhouses, and hospitals of Great Britain were crowded with the victims of this loathsome disease, for its effects on the living were indeed fearful to witness, and we are told that two-thirds of the applicants for relief at the Hospital for the Indigent Blind owed their loss of sight to small-pox.

And although small-pox had thus raged for centuries among civilised nations, as yet no means had been found to cripple its power or mitigate its effects. True, Lady Mary Wortley Montague had introduced the practice of inoculation from Egypt, by which the disease was artificially produced in a modified form. But this, however advantageous to the individual, was undoubtedly inimical to the common weal, for it so multiplied the foci of contagion, the artificial being as contagious as the natural disease, that it rendered small-pox more prevalent than ever, and hence its effects became most disastrous, as it was seen that the general mortality from small-pox had greatly increased since the adoption of this practice.

The time was therefore ripe for the discovery when Dr. Edward Jenner hurried from his native Berkeley to London, and published in June, 1798, "An Enquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variola Vaccina, known by the Name of the Cow-Pox." This pamphlet was the fruit of twenty-three years' study and experiment, which he pursued in spite of obstacles and opposition sufficient to discourage anyone possessed of less genius than himself. For it was in 1775 that Dr. Jenner's attention was first directed to the subject, by observing that a number of persons in Gloucestershire could not be inoculated with small pox; and, having ascertained in the course of his inquiries that there was a popular belief that persons who had caught the cow-pox from milking the cows were not subject to small-pox, he began to investigate the grounds for this belief. The inquiry was by no means an easy one, for at the very threshold he was confronted with a serious difficulty. He found that the cow's teat was subject to a variety of eruptions, all of which were indiscriminately named cow-pox. These he learned to distinguish, and ultimately ascertained that only one of them was possessed of a specific protective power over the human body. This he called the true cow-pox, the other the spurious. He then gave himself up to an exhaustive investigation of the qualities of true cow-pox, during which he ascertained that it underwent progres page 5 sive changes, and was endowed with prophylactic or anti-variolous properties only at one period of its progress, or in the acme of eruption. In 1796 he was first, enabled to carry his brilliant idea into practice by taking the decisive step of inoculating for the cow-pox, upon the success of which the truth or falsity of his deductions from his long labours would be demonstrated. Entirely successful as these first vaccinations were, with the patience characteristic of the man, he waited two years, testing his discovery in every possible way, before he published the results to the world. Every page of his work bore the impress of genius, and is still as deserving of study as it was when first issued from the press. In it Dr. Jenner contends that cow-pox does not originate in the cow, but is communicated from the horse, where it appears on the heels, and is known by the name of the grease, which is conveyed to the cow by the hands of farm-servants and milkers. He next suggests that small-pox may have been originally morbid matter of the same kind, which circumstances had changed and aggravated into a contagious and malignant disease. He finally states his conviction that cow-pox inoculation secures the constitution forever afterwards from the infection of small-pox.

If Dr. Jenner expected that his discovery would be immediately welcomed, and he himself hailed as on of England's foremost sons, he must have been grievously disappointed, for his work was received with marked hostility. The moth-minded and hollow-hearted men of his own profession—for many such, alas! then as now, disgrace this noble calling—were foremost in the attempt to run him down, lending the weight of their influence and reputations to crush this obscure country practitioner. Not a single medical man could be induced to make a trial of vaccination. It appeared for a time as if the discovery were to be lost to the nation. The comic periodicals of the day, taking their cue from the leaders of the profession in London, published the grossest caricatures of this great and good man. He was represented as attempting to bestialise his species by the introduction into their systems of diseased matter from the cow's udder. It was gravely asserted, and received a ready credence, that vaccinated children became ox-faced, that abscesses broke out to indicate sprouting horns, and that the countenance was gradually transmuted into the visage of a cow, the voice into the bellowing of bulls. Not only did his enemies attack his professional reputation, but they assailed his moral character, and the pulpit fulminated its anathemas against him, and denounced his discovery as diabolical. Indeed, so violent was the opposition at this time to the operation, that several persons who had sufficient courage to undergo vaccination were set upon by a mob, pelted with stones, and driven into their houses.

At length, having spent three fruitless months in London, Dr. page 6 Jenner returned to his native village, dejected and discouraged. But we hold that true merit and goodness can never be finally crushed by calumny, misrepresentation, and abuse, and will ultimately come to the front not only in spite of, but even because of such hateful opposition. And for Jenner the hour of triumph was at hand. Two ladies of quality, Lady Ducie and the Countess of Berkeley, whose names must for ever be placed in honourable juxtaposition to that of Jenner, had the courage to have their children vaccinated, a step which effectually broke through the prejudices of the day. In 1801 upwards of 6000 persons had been vaccinated, the greater part of whom were tested and proved to be protected from small-pox. Before the end of 1802 vaccination was introduced into Prance, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the East Indies. Everywhere Jenner was recognised as the greatest benefactor of his age, and received many tokens of grateful recognition of his services. In 1802 the British Parliament voted him £10,000; in 1807 it gave him other £20,000; decorations and public thanks were sent him by foreign governments;—but what he valued more highly than these tangible and ostentatious rewards were the blessings of those that were ready to perish.

When the success of his discovery had made Tenner famous, his conduct was marked by a degree of modesty and self-denial which invariably accompanies true goodness, an example which it would be well for physicians in our day to imitate—many of whom, apparently pursuing their high vocation with the sole object of gain, reduce their profession to the low level of shoddy manufacturers, huckstering merchants, and pettifogging lawyers. On being urged to quit his native village, where he practised as a physician, to settle in London where fame and fortune where within his reach, he thus wrote to a friend:—" Shall I who, even in the morning of my life, sought the lowly and sequestered path of life—the valley, and not the mountain—shall I, now my evening is fast approaching, hold myself up as an object for fortune and for fame?"