7 SLAYING THE SPECKLED MONSTER

The life of Edward Jenner can seem like a story about the unpredictable, even whimsical, nature of achievement. Jenner (1749—1823) did not set out to produce the single greatest advance in the history of medicine. On the contrary, he seems, for the first two-thirds of his life, to have wanted little more than a comfortable and modestly useful existence. As much as others angled for high position and public honor, Jenner shrank from them. Offered a place, at twenty-two, as a naturalist aboard HMS Resolution for the second voyage of the celebrated explorer James Cook, then at the height of his fame, Jenner demurred. He chose instead to retreat to the familiar charms of the British countryside and the study of hedgehogs and cuckoos. Offered a partnership in London, at twenty-six, with his friend and former teacher John Hunter, the greatest surgeon of the day, he politely declined. He preferred to remain a country doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, his birthplace. A few months short of his fortieth birthday, and only a half-dozen years shy of the discovery that would save hundreds of millions of lives and win him worldwide acclaim, he admitted to being “still under the dominion of indolence.” It is almost a parable in the futility of ambition.