Sketcher.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 422, 19 May 1904, Page 7

Sketcher.

FAMOUS MEN. ! ..-■■ was the discoverer of vaccinaftlWUra t , l0B? ' Dr - Jeaner,' you will doubtless reply, with perhaps a scathing 'aside' regarding the unneoessarineßs of the question. But your answer is wrong. Dr. Jenner did not discover vaccination. He merely introduced it to the notice of the medical fraternity, and, by experimenting and lecturing, made the.practice popular, Thel real «discoverer' of the Becret, in the only true sense of that much abused teim, was a poor, illiterate cow-herd named John Stimson. He had noticed, as had many others before him, that milkmaids who had the cow-pox never look the small-pox; ao one day, when the latter disease was raging in his neighbourhood, he inoculated himself, his wife, and his eleven children, with matter taken from a pustule on the hand of a milkmaid who had caught cow-pox from an infected animal.

As a result, they all escaped scathless from a pestilence that took heavy toll of most of their neighbours. Jenner got to hear of if, and interviewed Stimson, And, from what he then and there learnt, he was induced to begin the series of experiments which culminated in the foundation, some six-years later, of the Boyal Jennerine Vaccine Institution. It Bhould, by rights, have been the Royal Stimeonian Vaccine Institution, But, then, it is proverbial that the world knows nothing of its greatest men.

Everybody is familiar with Macanlay's stirring poem,' The Atmada/ in which is told, in language worthy of the theme, < how towards

' The lovely close of a wa; m summer day, There came a gallant merchant-ship fnll sail to Plymouth Bay,' bringing news of the immediate approach of the hostile fleet,

What was the name of the captain of this ' gallant merchaßt-ehip,' who, at infinite risk to himself,, ran the gauntlet of the towering Spanish galleons, and gave the English admirals the priceless thirtysix hours' start, without which the result of the ensuing fighting might have been very different. You may ask the question in vain of ai>y but the most learned historians, and even they will probably havo to consult miay musty tomea before enlightening you, For Thomas Fleming, the hero in queatioa, got little thanks or recognition, either then or thereafter. He was just a plain bluff sailor-man,- who did his duty and afterwards went his way, and whom men promptly forgot, as is their wont under Buch circumstance. Nevertheless, had he his due his bones should be resting at this moment in Westminster Abbey, and his name and fame Bhould be as familiar to Englishmen of classes as are those of Nelson or Wellington or Drake or Frobisher.

And as it is with Stimson and with Fletnisg, so is it with many, many others of Britain's benefactors. Their deeds and their names have been alike consigned to oblivion.

Who knows anything of Thomas Newcomen, for instance ? Yet he it was who, long prior to the days of Watt and Stephenbod, invented the steam-engine, and eo laid thci foundation -of onr commercial supremacy. His was no mere model, either, but a working engine. He set it up at Dartiuoutb, where it wag ia use for nearly a century without alteration or amendment; -but meanwhile, its inventor, poor and friendless, died in London while vainly endeavouring to raise funds to obtain a patent. Army Medical Corps, named Tomkins, who, while serving in India, found out that wounds kept constantly sprayed with carbolic acid solution did not fester. He told the captain, who told several of his colleagues; and in the end the news reached the ears of Dr. Joseph (afterwards Lord) Lister, who, after a long series of exhaustive experiments, announced to a wondering and at first incredulous world the discovery of antiseptic Burgery. When, on May 10th, 1857, the mutineers seized Delhi, most of the non-combatant whites were butchered cff-hand. A few, alarmed by the firing and the shouts, managed to escapa. One, and one only, a telegraph operator, named Brandish, remained quietly at his post, as though nothing unusual were happening. And all the while he kept sending out, to all parts of India, warning messages telling of the outbreak. Thereby, in all probability, he saved for Britain her Eastern Empire. But you will not, for all that, find the name of Brendish blazoned on any Imperial scroll of fame, or inscribed on any national memorial. Only to the solitary student of Oriental history is it at all familiar.

Aad some of the heroes of those stirring times fared worse—their very names even are unknown. Who, fornnstance, was the mysteriiua ' ninth man' who helped to blowup the Delhi magazine? What was the name of the solitary sepoy belonging to the 74-th Bengal Infantry, who, when all his comrades mutinied, remained true to his salt, warned the whites of their peril, and was affcerwardd, for his pains, flayed alive by his angry fellow-sepoys P Or, again, to what native corps belongs the honour of carrying on its muster-roll the gallant subadar, who, with a scratch equad of fifteen or twenty heroic men, covered Maclaine's retreat at Maiwand, and saved the defeated and disheartened British army from almost certain annihilation? Who was the jemadar who gave up his life fer Dr. Brydone in the Khyber PaBS, thereby enabling him to alarm the Jellalabad garrison, and preserve the Punjaub from invasion? No one knows. Britain's benefactors, each and every one of them. But benefactors whom she has tacitly consented to for ever forget.