Part 34 (2/2)

Standish never turned out an inch for any wayfarer. Sullen and overbearing, he rode straight on upon one side of the road; and, however narrow the way might be, he never swerved a barley-corn from his line for horse or rider, cart or carriage. Our dear friend Charley Halifax gave him a smart lesson in good manners on this point. Charley had brought a well-bred hackney, and a large fund of animal spirits, down from Cambridge to a t.i.tle for orders in mid-Suffolk. He had met Standish in the cottages of some of his flock, and afterwards meeting elsewhere, had greeted him, and had no greeting in return. It was not long ere Charley learnt all about the clownish apothecary, and speedily did he devise a scheme for humbling him. The next time he saw Standish in the distance, trotting on towards him, Charley put his heels to his horse, and charged the man of drugs at full gallop.

Standish came lumbering on, disdaining to look before him and ascertain who was clattering along at such a pace. On arriving within six feet of Standish's horse, Halifax fell back on his curb-rein, and pulled up sharp. Astonished, but more sensible than his master, Standish's horse (as Charley knew would be the case) suddenly came to a dead stop, on which Standish rolled over its head into the muddy highway. As he rolled over, he threw out a volley of oaths. ”Ah, doctor,” cried Charley, good-humoredly, ”I said I would make you speak to me.” Standish was six feet high, and a powerful man. For a few moments, on recovering his legs, he looked as if he contemplated an a.s.sault on the young parson. But he thought better of it; and, climbing into his seat once more, trotted on, without another word--dish, dosh, dus.h.!.+ The incident didn't tend to soften his feelings toward the Established Church.

The country doctor of the last century always went his rounds on horseback booted and spurred. The state of the roads rendered any other mode of travelling impracticable to men who had not only to use the highways and coach-roads, but to make their way up bridle-paths, and drifts, and lanes, to secluded farmsteads and outlying villages.

Even as late as the last generation, in Suffolk, where now people drive to and fro at the rate of twelve miles an hour, a doctor (whom the writer of these pages has reason to think of with affection) was more than once mired, on a slightly-built blood horse, so effectually, that he had to dismount ere the animal could be extricated; and this happened in roads that at the present time are, in all seasons, firm as a garden walk.

Describing the appearance of a country doctor of this period, a writer observes--”When first I saw him, it was on Frampton Green. I was somewhat his junior in years, and had heard so much of him that I had no small curiosity to see him. He was dressed in a blue coat and yellow b.u.t.tons, buckskins, well-polished jockey-boots, with handsome silver spurs, and he carried a smart whip with a silver handle. His hair, after the fas.h.i.+on, was done up in a club, and he wore a broad-brimmed hat.” Such was the appearance of Jenner, as he galloped across the vale of Gloucester, visiting his patients. There is little to remind us of such a personage as this in the statue in Trafalgar Square, which is the slowly-offered tribute of our grat.i.tude to Edward Jenner for his imperishable services to mankind. The opposition that Jenner met with in his labours to free our species from a hideous malady that, destroying life and obliterating beauty, spared neither the cottage nor the palace, is a subject on which it is painful to reflect. The learned of his own profession and the vulgar of all ranks combined to persecute and insult him; and when the merit of his inestimable discovery was acknowledged by all intelligent persons, he received from his country a remuneration that was little better than total neglect.

While acting as an apprentice to a country surgeon he first conceived the possibility of checking the ravages of small-pox. A young servant woman, who accidentally said that she was guarded from that disease by having ”had cow-pox,” first apprized him that amongst the servants of a rural population a belief existed that the virus from the diseased cow, on being absorbed by the human system, was a preventive against small-pox. From that time, till the ultimate success of his inquiries, he never lost sight of the subject.

The ridicule and misrepresentation to which he was subjected are at this date more pleasant for us to laugh at than, at the time, they were for him to bear. The ignorant populace of London was instructed that people, on being vaccinated, ran great risks of being converted into members of the bovine family. The appearance of hair covering the whole body, of horns and a tail, followed in many cases the operation.

The condition of an unhappy child was pathetically described, who, brutified by vaccine ichor, persisted in running on all-fours and roaring like a bull. Dr. Woodville and Dr. Moseley opposed Jenner, the latter with a violence that little became a scientific inquirer.

Numerous were the squibs and caricatures the controversy called forth.

Jenner was represented as riding on a cow--an animal certainly not adapted to show the doctor (”booted and spurred” as we have just seen him) off to the best advantage. Of Moseley the comic muse sung:

”Oh, Moseley! thy book, nightly phantasies rousing, Full oft makes me quake for my heart's dearest treasure; For fancy, in dreams, oft presents them all browsing On commons, just like little Nebuchadnezzar.

_There_, nibbling at thistle, stand Jem, Joe, and Mary, On their foreheads, O horrible! crumpled horns bud: There Tom with his tail, and poor William all hairy, Reclined in a corner, are chewing the cud.”

If London was unjust to him, the wiseacres of Gloucesters.h.i.+re thought that burning was his fit punishment. One dear old lady, whenever she saw him leaving his house, used to run out and attack him with indescribable vivacity. ”So your book,” cried this charming matron, in genuine Gloucesters.h.i.+re dialect, ”is out at last. Well! I can tell you that there bean't a copy sold in our town, nor shan't neither, if I can help it.” On hearing, subsequent to the publication of the book (a great offence to the old lady!), some rumours of vaccination failures, the same goodie bustled up to the doctor and cried, with galling irony, ”Shan't us have a general inoculation now?”

But Jenner was compensated for this worthy woman's opposition in the enthusiastic support of Rowland Hill, who not only advocated vaccination in his ordinary conversation, but from the pulpit used to say, after his sermon to his congregation, wherever he preached, ”I am ready to vaccinate to-morrow morning as many children as you choose; and if you wish them to escape that horrid disease, the small-pox, you will bring them.” A Vaccine Board was also established at the Surrey Chapel--_i. e._ the Octagon Chapel, in Blackfriars Road.

”My Lord,” said Rowland Hill once to a n.o.bleman, ”allow me to present to your Lords.h.i.+p my friend, Dr. Jenner, who has been the means of saving more lives than any other man.”

”Ah!” observed Jenner, ”would that I, like you, could say--souls.”

There was no cant in this. Jenner was a simple, unaffected, and devout man. His last words were, ”I do not marvel that men are grateful to me, but I am surprised that they do not feel grat.i.tude to G.o.d for making me a medium of good.”

Of Jenner's more sprightly humour, the following epigrams from his pen (communicated to the writer of these pages by Dr. E. D. Moore of Salop), are good specimens.

”TO MY SPANISH CIGAR.

”Soother of an anxious hour!

Parent of a thousand pleasures!

With grat.i.tude I owe thy power And place thee 'mongst my choicest treasures.

Thou canst the keenest pangs disarm Which care obtrudes upon the heart; At thy command, my little charm, Quick from the bosom they depart.”

”ON THE DEATH OF JOHN AND BETTY COLE.

”Why, neighbours, thus mournfully sorrow and fret?

Here lie snug and cosy old John and his Bet; Your sighing and sobbing unG.o.dly and rash is, For two k.n.o.bs of coal that have now gone to ashes.”

”ON MISS JENNER AND MISS EMILY WORTHINGTON TEARING THE ”GLOBE”

NEWSPAPER.

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