fish gladness. No
feeling of personal ambition, no hope or desire of fame, sullied the
purity of his noble philanthropy. 'While the vaccine discovery was
progressive,' he writes, 'the joy at the prospect before me of being
the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest
calamities, blended with the fond hope of enjoying independence, and
domestic peace and happiness, were often so excessive, that, in
pursuing my favorite subject among the meadows, I have sometimes found
myself in a kind of reverie. It is pleasant to recollect that those
reflections always ended in devout acknowledgments to that Being from
whom this and all other blessings flow.' At last an opportunity
occurred of putting his theory to the test. On the 14th day of May,
1796,--the day marks an epoch in the Healing Art, and is not less
worthy of being kept as a national thanksgiving than the day of
Waterloo--the cow-pox matter or pus was taken from the hand of one
Sarah Holmes, who had been infected from her master's cows, and was
inserted by two superficial incisions into the arms of James Phipps, a
healthy boy of about eight years of age. The cow-pox ran its ordinary
course without any injurious effect, and the boy was afterward
inoculated for the small-pox,--happily in vain. The protection was
complete; and Jenner thenceforward pursued his experiments with
redoubled ardor. His first summary of them, after having been examined
and approved by several friends, appeared under the title of 'An
Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae,' in June,
1798. In this important work he announced the security against the
small-pox afforded by the true cow-pox, and proceeded to trace the
origin of that disease in the cow to a similar affection of the horse's
heel."

This publication produced a great sensation in the medical world, and
vaccination spread so rapidly that in the following summer Jenner had
the indorsement of the majority of the leading surgeons of London.
Vaccination was soon introduced into France, where Napoleon gave
another proof of his far-reaching sagacity by his immediate recognition
of the importance of vaccination. It was then spread all over the
continent; and in 1800 Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Boston introduced it
into America; in 1801, with his sons-in-law, President Jefferson
vaccinated in their own families and those of their friends nearly 200
persons. Quinan has shown that vaccination was intro