View report page

17
last century. The numbers refer to the annual death rate
per million of the living population. Berlin is credited with
3422 per million, Sweden 2050, Moravia 5402, whilst
Silesia is remarkable with 5812, and Trieste with an
enormous small pox death rate of 14,046.
Whilst Small Pox was claiming its victims at home and
abroad unfettered by natural boundaries and unrestrained
by anything human skill could devise; in a small and
obscure village of Gloucestershire, Edward Jenner was engaged
in a scries of experiments upon lymph derived from
the udder of the cow. With the farmers and villagers among
whom he practised his profession a tradition was current
and probably repeated often enough in his hearing concerning
the antagonism existing between cow pox and small pox.
Sayings of this character upon many other subjects were
doubtless common in the village community. Country folkare
often keen observers of nature. The folk-lore current
among them represents the result of the crude observation
of many generations crystallized by age into trite and many
times into rhyming phrases. Serving sometimes as a guide
to action, sometimes as a warning against danger, the folklore
of the country often contains a solid substratum
of wisdom. It was from folk-lore that vaccination derived
its origin. Jenner had not only heard the .tradition, but he
had determined to search for the kernel of truth lying hidden
in the husks which enveloped that tradition. He had
already observed how some engaged in dairy work had
escaped infection even in the presence of an epidemic of
unusual severity. He had noticed a peculiar and painful
disease often contracted by the milkers, which declared
itself by the appearance of a sore upon the hand. His
attention had also been directed to the occasional occurrence
pf an eruption upon the udder of the cow, to which he
f