Three Unpublished Letters of Edward Jenner

Letters were the chief means which Jenner used in making his discovery and his views known. Baron printed a large number of letters to and from Jenner in the Life; many of the originals of these have not been traced, but others have been published from time to time, and more still remain unpublished in libraries. They are the best record of Jenner's many-sided interests and world-wide contacts, his generosity, his scientific enthusiasm and sense of mission, and his occasional melancholy; though his ponderous playfulness and pseudo-poetical style make them unattractive to a modern reader, and quite unlike the forthright letters which John Hunter wrote to him. Autographs are not uncommon, but as they have been eagerly collected Munaret's words of 1860 are still true: “Les autographes de Jenner pèsent de l'or.”

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