Read Online QI The Book of the Dead by John Mitchinson, John Lloyd - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Mitchinson, John Lloyd
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and sceptical ofcontemporary theories that birds (like bats) hibernated in winter. He dissected them and found seeds that came from other countries. He also noted that returning swallows were not, in fact, ‘dirty’ – going against the prevailing wisdom that they spent the winter asleep in the mud at the bottom of ponds.
His work on bird migration wasn’t published until the very end of his life, but it was an earlier piece of birdlife research that first made his name. In 1787, his ‘Observations on the Cuckoo’ revealed that cuckoo chicks have hollows in their backs, allowing them to scoop up the other baby birds in the nest and tip them over the side. This unique feature is only present for the first twelve days of the cuckoo’s life. Until Jenner’s publication, it had been assumed that it was the foster birds that got rid of their own chicks. His theory wasn’t universally accepted until photography confirmed he was right in the twentieth century, but it was good enough to get him elected to the Royal Society in 1789.
Close observation was Jenner’s forte and it led to another breakthrough: he was one of the first doctors to make a connection between arteriosclerosis of the coronary arteries and angina. In 1786, he noted that, in one of his patients who had suffered from angina, the coronary arteries were ‘blocked’ with a ‘white fleshy cartilaginous matter’ that made a grating sound when he cut through them. ‘The heart, I believe,’ he wrote, ‘in every subject that has died of the angina pectoris , has been found extremely loaded with fat.’
Jenner thoroughly enjoyed life in Gloucestershire. He was a popular country-house guest, highly regarded as a witty raconteur, poet and violinist. He was also a natty dresser. According to his friend Edward Gardner, he was usually to be seen in ‘a blue coat, and yellow buttons, buckskin, well polishedjockey boots with silver spurs, and he carried a smart whip with a silver handle’. Like Ben Franklin and Epicurus, he loved like-minded company, and founded two clubs: the Convivio-medical Society and the Medico-convivial Society. They met in separate inns and had, as their names imply, similar interests but opposite priorities. Jenner was also a keen balloonist, a hobby that terrified the local farmers but was to lead him to his future wife, Catherine. His unmanned, varnished-silk balloon landed in the grounds of her father’s estate.
Edward and Catherine were married in 1788 and had four children. The eldest, Edward, died of tuberculosis aged twenty-one. Jenner was devastated, but, ever the scientist, used the blood from his son’s frequent bleedings to enrich his manure and see if it had any effect on the growth of plants.
He was forty-seven when he made the discovery that would make him famous. By the late eighteenth century, 60 per cent of the population of Europe was infected with smallpox. A third of those who contracted the disease died and survivors were left horribly disfigured. Elsewhere in the world, the toll was even worse: an estimated 95 per cent of the indigenous peoples in the Americas perished from the disease after the Conquistadors brought it with them in the fifteenth century. When Jenner was a child, the only hope of staving it off was a process called variolation ( variola was the scientific name for smallpox, from the Latin varius , ‘spotty’) where dried smallpox scabs were rubbed into a cut on the hand in the hope that the body would develop resistance to the full-blown disease. It was reasonably effective, but the side effects were unpleasant and the risk of contracting smallpox remained unacceptably high.
Jenner had suffered the discomfort of variolation as a child – italso involved being starved and purged – and though he introduced it to his village practice as a standard procedure, he began experimenting to see if a safer alternative could be found. Among his patients, he noticed that milkmaids rarely caught
His work on bird migration wasn’t published until the very end of his life, but it was an earlier piece of birdlife research that first made his name. In 1787, his ‘Observations on the Cuckoo’ revealed that cuckoo chicks have hollows in their backs, allowing them to scoop up the other baby birds in the nest and tip them over the side. This unique feature is only present for the first twelve days of the cuckoo’s life. Until Jenner’s publication, it had been assumed that it was the foster birds that got rid of their own chicks. His theory wasn’t universally accepted until photography confirmed he was right in the twentieth century, but it was good enough to get him elected to the Royal Society in 1789.
Close observation was Jenner’s forte and it led to another breakthrough: he was one of the first doctors to make a connection between arteriosclerosis of the coronary arteries and angina. In 1786, he noted that, in one of his patients who had suffered from angina, the coronary arteries were ‘blocked’ with a ‘white fleshy cartilaginous matter’ that made a grating sound when he cut through them. ‘The heart, I believe,’ he wrote, ‘in every subject that has died of the angina pectoris , has been found extremely loaded with fat.’
Jenner thoroughly enjoyed life in Gloucestershire. He was a popular country-house guest, highly regarded as a witty raconteur, poet and violinist. He was also a natty dresser. According to his friend Edward Gardner, he was usually to be seen in ‘a blue coat, and yellow buttons, buckskin, well polishedjockey boots with silver spurs, and he carried a smart whip with a silver handle’. Like Ben Franklin and Epicurus, he loved like-minded company, and founded two clubs: the Convivio-medical Society and the Medico-convivial Society. They met in separate inns and had, as their names imply, similar interests but opposite priorities. Jenner was also a keen balloonist, a hobby that terrified the local farmers but was to lead him to his future wife, Catherine. His unmanned, varnished-silk balloon landed in the grounds of her father’s estate.
Edward and Catherine were married in 1788 and had four children. The eldest, Edward, died of tuberculosis aged twenty-one. Jenner was devastated, but, ever the scientist, used the blood from his son’s frequent bleedings to enrich his manure and see if it had any effect on the growth of plants.
He was forty-seven when he made the discovery that would make him famous. By the late eighteenth century, 60 per cent of the population of Europe was infected with smallpox. A third of those who contracted the disease died and survivors were left horribly disfigured. Elsewhere in the world, the toll was even worse: an estimated 95 per cent of the indigenous peoples in the Americas perished from the disease after the Conquistadors brought it with them in the fifteenth century. When Jenner was a child, the only hope of staving it off was a process called variolation ( variola was the scientific name for smallpox, from the Latin varius , ‘spotty’) where dried smallpox scabs were rubbed into a cut on the hand in the hope that the body would develop resistance to the full-blown disease. It was reasonably effective, but the side effects were unpleasant and the risk of contracting smallpox remained unacceptably high.
Jenner had suffered the discomfort of variolation as a child – italso involved being starved and purged – and though he introduced it to his village practice as a standard procedure, he began experimenting to see if a safer alternative could be found. Among his patients, he noticed that milkmaids rarely caught
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