Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/330

 of Jenner, and the House of Commons voted 20,000l. to Jenner.

Jenner became a member of the Medical and Chirurgical Society when it was founded, and on 21 March 1809 read a paper on ‘Distemper in Dogs’ (‘Med.-Chir. Transactions,’ i. 263), and in the same year another paper on ‘Two cases of Small-pox Infection communicated to the Fœtus in Utero, under peculiar circumstances.’ In 1811 Jenner had a serious illness, after which he again came to London. Numerous cases of small-pox after vaccination which were reported caused him to seek for an explanation, and he at length observed that in these the severity of the disease was diminished by the previous vaccination. In 1813 the university of Oxford conferred on him the degree of M.D. In April 1814 he came to London for the last time and stayed for three months. He had interviews, on the visit of the allied sovereigns to England, with the czar and with his sister the Duchess of Oldenburg, and with the king of Prussia.

He returned to Cheltenham, where his wife died 14 Sept. 1815. He then went to Berkeley and resided there for the rest of his life. In 1822 he published ‘A Letter to C. H. Parry, M.D., on the Influence of Artificial Eruptions in certain Diseases incidental to the Human Body,’ and in 1823, ‘Observations on the Migration of Birds,’ which was read before the Royal Society on 23 Nov. He had had an attack of apoplexy on 6 Aug. 1820, but recovered completely. On 26 Jan. 1823 he died in another fit, and was buried 3 Feb. in the chancel of the parish church of Berkeley. His house was called ‘The Chantry,’ and adjoined the churchyard.

There are several portraits of Jenner extant; one is by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and another is by James Northcote. The latter is in the National Portrait Gallery, and was engraved in stipple by Ridley for the ‘European Magazine’ in 1804. There is a marble statue of him at the west end of the nave of Gloucester Cathedral. A bronze statue, erected in Trafalgar Square in September 1858, was in 1862 transferred to Kensington Gardens (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 229). On the continent of Europe there are statues to him at Boulogne-sur-Mer and at Brünn in Moravia.

Jenner's friendships with John Hunter, Matthew Baillie, and many lesser men, were firm and unbroken throughout life. Dibdin, in his ‘Reminiscences,’ says: ‘I never knew a man of a simpler mind or of a warmer heart than Dr. Jenner.’ His kindness to the poor was invariable. He sought the just public reward of his services, but showed complete freedom from any wish to enrich himself unworthily when riches were in his power. His discovery has in the past hundred years saved innumerable lives throughout the world, and entitles him to a place in the first rank of those who have improved the art of medicine. In 1840 an act of the English parliament provided for the payment of vaccination fees out of the rates. Vaccination was first made compulsory in the United Kingdom in 1853, and supplementary legislation followed in 1867, 1871, and again in 1898. Vaccination was made compulsory in Bavaria as early as 1807, in Denmark in 1810, in Sweden in 1814, in Würtemberg in 1818, in Prussia in 1835, in Roumania in 1874, in Hungary in 1876, and in Servia in 1881. Government provides facilities for vaccination, although there are no compulsory laws, in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Norway, Austria, and Turkey. In Switzerland vaccination is only compulsory in some of the cantons. 

JENNER, EDWARD (1803–1872), botanist, born 13 March 1803, was for forty-seven years traveller to the printing-house of Baxter of Lewes, for the ‘Sussex Express.’ Although quite ignorant of Latin, he worked hard at entomology and botany, securing a close and critical knowledge of the fresh-water algæ. He was elected an associate of the Linnean Society in 1838. The cryptogamic