tized. By his example, by his prodigious industry, and by his
suggestive experiments he led men again into the old paths of Aristotle,
Galen and Harvey. He made all thinking physicians naturalists, and he
lent a dignity to the study of organic life, and re-established a close
union between medicine and the natural sciences. Both in Britain and
Greater Britain, he laid the foundation of the great collections and
museums, particularly those connected with the medical schools. The
Wistar-Horner and the Warren Museums in this country originated with men
greatly influenced by Hunter. He was, moreover, the intellectual father
of that interesting group of men on this side of the Atlantic who, while
practising as physicians, devoted much time and labor to the study of
natural history; such men as Benjamin Smith Barton, David Hossack, Jacob
Bigelow, Richard Harlan, John D. Godman, Samuel George Morton, John
Collins Warren, Samuel L. Mitchill and J. Ailken Meigs. He gave an
immense impetus in Great Britain to the study of morbid anatomy, and
his nephew, Matthew Baillie, published the first important book on the
subject in the English language.

Before the eighteenth century closed practical medicine had made great
advance. Smallpox, though not one of the great scourges like plague
or cholera, was a prevalent and much dreaded disease, and in civilized
countries few reached adult life without an attack. Edward Jenner, a
practitioner in Gloucestershire, and the pupil to whom John Hunter gave
the famous advice: "Don't think, try!" had noticed that milkmaids
who had been infected with cowpox from the udder of the cow were
insusceptible to smallpox. I show you here the hand of Sarah Nelmes with
cowpox, 1796. A vague notion had prevailed among the dairies from time
immemorial that this disease was a preventive of the smallpox. Jenner
put the matter to the test of experiment. Let me quote here his own
words: "The first experiment was made upon a lad of the name of Phipps,
in whose arm a little vaccine virus was inserted, taken from the hand
of a young woman who had been accidentally infected by a cow.
Notwithstanding the resemblance which the pustule, thus excited on
the boy's arm, bore to variolous inoculation, yet as the indisposition
attending it was barely perceptible, I could scarcely persuade myself
the patient was secure from the Small Pox. However, on his being
inoculated some months afterwards, it proved that he was secure."(8)