A timely and well-written opinion piece in today’s Buffalo News by Dr. Jerrold Winter reminds us all about the history of vaccination and resistance https://e-edition.buffalonews.com?selDate=20211109&goTo=A06:
Dr. Winter references Edward Jenner’s An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, the important 1798 medical study that introduces vaccination as a treatment for small pox. This Library owns a copy of this work in its Milestones of Science Collection (see http://milestones.buffalolib.org/booksBrowser/BookDetail.asp?item_id=112).
The only thing we might add to the thoughts and conversation that Dr. Winter’s piece elicits is a certain letter in this Library’s Gluck Manuscript Collection. The letter below, dated Monticello, Virginia, May 14, 1806, was written by Thomas Jefferson and, although he accidently has written it to Rev. Dr. G.C. Jenner, Dr. Edward Jenner’s nephew, his praise for Dr. Jenner’s vaccine work is overriding. Jefferson’s handwriting is quite readable and what the wordsmith writes is a joy to read. So take a moment and consider this letter in its original context and in today’s COVID-19 vaccination circumstance.
“I avail myself of this occasion of rendering you my portion of the tribute due to you from the whole human family. Medicine has never before produced any single improvement of such utility…
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