The Fleece Medical Society

the Old Fleece Inn. The original building in which Jenner and his friends met is now a private residence Hillgrove House on the A46 (Figure 1). Two of the five members founding the Fleece Medical Society, Edward Jenner of Berkeley and John Hickes of Gloucester, were already members of the Convivio-Medical Society meeting at the Ship Inn at Alveston near Bristol, a largely social club whose members were threatening to expel Jenner for his insistence on the importance of Coxpox as a protection against Smallpox. This may have been the spur that brought these five friends together to form what was, I believe, the oldest provincial medical society of which records still exist. The minutes are preserved, thanks to Sir William Osier who bought them from Dr. Alfred Henry Carter of Birmingham and later bequeathed them to the Royal College of Physicians in whose library they have been since 1928.