Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 32: Dr. Jurin retires - permanently

John Jurin was born in London in 1684, lived in what appears to be a pretty average household, and was granted a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. He earned a BA and a MA, became a school head teacher, and gave public lectures on mathematics and Isaac Newton. He returned to Cambridge to study medicine, earning his MD in 1716. He established a medical practice while also lecturing on anatomy and working at a London hospital.

His most notable contribution to medicine (or more precisely, public health) came in his research into smallpox variolation - where material from a smallpox sore is inserted into a scratch on a healthy person to give them a mild case of the disease, which would also confer lifelong immunity to the disease. Based on his statistical analysis, compounded by results found elsewhere in England, he determined that variolation was much less risky than catching smallpox naturally. 

His medical work didn't preclude him from involvement with math and other sciences. A fellow of the Royal Society, he was its secretary during the latter part of Isaac Newton's presidency, and was an ardent supporter of Newton's work. At one point he published a 300-plus page defending Newtonian calculus against a critique by George Berkeley. Jurin also studies optics, the mechanics of the heart, meteorology, and had a law concerning capillary action named for him.

It wasn't all smooth sailing for Jurin, though. A medicine he created for treating bladder stones may have accidentally killed Robert Walpole (though Walpole's health was always precarious). Jurin himself would pass away five years after Walpole, on March 29, 1750.