Read Online QI The Book of the Dead by John Mitchinson, John Lloyd - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Mitchinson, John Lloyd
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Half the population of Philadelphia – 20,000 people – attended his funeral, and his pallbearers included representatives of all the main religious denominations. (Ever the pragmatist, Franklin had been careful to contribute to each of their building funds, including one for a new synagogue.) Few men can honestly say they have left the world a better place. Through the warmth and courage of his character and the deep originality of his mind,Citizen Ben Franklin, the first self-taught American genius, was certainly one of them.
The career of the English doctor Edward Jenner (1749–1823) can’t possibly match Franklin’s for excitement. He spent most of his life working quietly in his home village of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, but he too changed the world beyond all recognition. The two men shared the same sunny outlook and the same voracious enthusiasm for learning and experiment. In Jenner’s case, this led to a discovery that has probably saved more human lives than any other.
The eighth of nine children, he lost both his parents before he was six but his elder siblings looked after him well. His sister Deborah took him in to her family home, and his brother Stephen planned out his education, so that by the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a surgeon in nearby Chipping Sodbury. Edward was a happy, self-absorbed child, obsessed with fossil-hunting and natural history. By the time he was nine he had a large collection of dormouse nests and would always carry a large pocketbook to record his observations. He could never walk past a butcher’s shop without peering at the various organs on display in case they revealed something anatomically interesting. He maintained his interest in such things throughout his life, long after he became famous. As an old man, he was delighted to be the first to find and identify the fossilised bones of an aquatic dinosaur (the plesiosaur) near his home. To him, fossils were no dusty old bits of rock; they were ‘monuments to departed worlds’.
Edward Jenner would have liked Epicurus’ belief that happiness comes from living an unobtrusive life. ‘As for fame,what is it?’ he wrote to a friend. ‘A gilded butt for ever pierced with the arrows of malignancy.’ But, try as he might, anonymity was not to be his destiny. Aged twenty-one he went up to London to study anatomy, physiology and midwifery under the eminent surgeon John Hunter (1728–93). Hunter was the most distinguished anatomist of his day, and it was he who encouraged Jenner to experiment rather than speculate about his scientific ideas. His motto was: ‘Don’t think, try!’ On his two acres of land at Earl’s Court, Hunter kept ostriches, leopards, buffaloes, jackals and snakes, all for his students to carve up and investigate. If need be, he supplemented his supply by bringing in the carcasses of exotic beasts from the Royal Zoo at the Tower of London.
In 1771, when Joseph Banks returned from James Cook’s first voyage, Hunter recommended Jenner to catalogue his botanical collection. Banks agreed, and was so impressed with Jenner’s work that he invited him to join Cook’s second voyage in 1772. After some hard thought, Jenner decided against it and went back home to set up his own general practice in Gloucestershire. He had also turned down John Hunter’s offer of a partnership, but the two men kept in close touch, with Hunter directing Jenner’s research into natural history by letter. After Jenner suffered a romantic setback, Hunter wrote to him saying:
Let her go, never mind her. I will employ you with hedge-hogs, for I do not know how far I may trust mine. I want you to get a hedge-hog in the beginning of winter and weigh him; put him in your garden, and let him have some leaves, hay or straw, to cover himself, which he will do; then weigh him in the Spring and see what he has lost .
Jenner was fascinated by hibernation
Half the population of Philadelphia – 20,000 people – attended his funeral, and his pallbearers included representatives of all the main religious denominations. (Ever the pragmatist, Franklin had been careful to contribute to each of their building funds, including one for a new synagogue.) Few men can honestly say they have left the world a better place. Through the warmth and courage of his character and the deep originality of his mind,Citizen Ben Franklin, the first self-taught American genius, was certainly one of them.
The career of the English doctor Edward Jenner (1749–1823) can’t possibly match Franklin’s for excitement. He spent most of his life working quietly in his home village of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, but he too changed the world beyond all recognition. The two men shared the same sunny outlook and the same voracious enthusiasm for learning and experiment. In Jenner’s case, this led to a discovery that has probably saved more human lives than any other.
The eighth of nine children, he lost both his parents before he was six but his elder siblings looked after him well. His sister Deborah took him in to her family home, and his brother Stephen planned out his education, so that by the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a surgeon in nearby Chipping Sodbury. Edward was a happy, self-absorbed child, obsessed with fossil-hunting and natural history. By the time he was nine he had a large collection of dormouse nests and would always carry a large pocketbook to record his observations. He could never walk past a butcher’s shop without peering at the various organs on display in case they revealed something anatomically interesting. He maintained his interest in such things throughout his life, long after he became famous. As an old man, he was delighted to be the first to find and identify the fossilised bones of an aquatic dinosaur (the plesiosaur) near his home. To him, fossils were no dusty old bits of rock; they were ‘monuments to departed worlds’.
Edward Jenner would have liked Epicurus’ belief that happiness comes from living an unobtrusive life. ‘As for fame,what is it?’ he wrote to a friend. ‘A gilded butt for ever pierced with the arrows of malignancy.’ But, try as he might, anonymity was not to be his destiny. Aged twenty-one he went up to London to study anatomy, physiology and midwifery under the eminent surgeon John Hunter (1728–93). Hunter was the most distinguished anatomist of his day, and it was he who encouraged Jenner to experiment rather than speculate about his scientific ideas. His motto was: ‘Don’t think, try!’ On his two acres of land at Earl’s Court, Hunter kept ostriches, leopards, buffaloes, jackals and snakes, all for his students to carve up and investigate. If need be, he supplemented his supply by bringing in the carcasses of exotic beasts from the Royal Zoo at the Tower of London.
In 1771, when Joseph Banks returned from James Cook’s first voyage, Hunter recommended Jenner to catalogue his botanical collection. Banks agreed, and was so impressed with Jenner’s work that he invited him to join Cook’s second voyage in 1772. After some hard thought, Jenner decided against it and went back home to set up his own general practice in Gloucestershire. He had also turned down John Hunter’s offer of a partnership, but the two men kept in close touch, with Hunter directing Jenner’s research into natural history by letter. After Jenner suffered a romantic setback, Hunter wrote to him saying:
Let her go, never mind her. I will employ you with hedge-hogs, for I do not know how far I may trust mine. I want you to get a hedge-hog in the beginning of winter and weigh him; put him in your garden, and let him have some leaves, hay or straw, to cover himself, which he will do; then weigh him in the Spring and see what he has lost .
Jenner was fascinated by hibernation
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