JENNER’S SUCCESSIVE DISCLAIMERS.
The story of vaccination is a story of failures, and as each failure has become manifest, it has been more or less artfully apologised for.
Much is given to assurance. People like infallible prescriptions. They prefer an unequivocal lie to an equivocal answer. This adventurers understand, and discourse accordingly. Hence when Jenner solicited Parliament for largess, he did so in no doubtful terms. He boldly declared that cowpox was “inoculated on the human frame with the most perfect ease and safety,” and was “attended with the singularly beneficial effect of rendering through life the person so inoculated perfectly secure from the infection of smallpox.” Again he said, “The human frame, when once it has felt the influence of genuine cowpox, is never afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by smallpox.”
It is needless to point out that Jenner was without warrant for his assertions. His experience did not cover more than a few years; and he could not, therefore, know that his specific would secure its subjects from smallpox for life. He believed, or affected to believe, his own assurance, and assurance being infectious, it widely spread. The inoculation of cowpox became fashionable among busybodies, male and female. Ladies especially were numbered among Jenner’s favourites and experts, operating, as he described, “with a light hand.” Cobbett relates, “Gentlemen and ladies made the beastly commodity a pocket companion; and if a cottager’s child were seen by them on a common (in Hampshire at least), and did not quickly take to its heels, it was certain to carry off more or less of the disease of the cow.”
It so happened that prior to the introduction of vaccination, a marked decline in the prevalence of smallpox had set in, and for the continuance of this decline the vaccinators took credit. “See,” they cried, “see what we are doing!” But they failed to observe that the decline prevailed among millions who did not participate in the cowpox salvation. Soon, however, cases of smallpox among the vaccinated began to be reported. At first they were denied. They were impossible. When the evidence became too strong for contradiction, it was said, “There must have been some mistake about the vaccination; for it is incredible that any one can be properly vaccinated and have smallpox: the human frame, when once it has felt the influence of genuine cowpox, is never afterwards, at any period of its existence assailable by smallpox.” Either some carelessness on the part of the vaccinator, or some defect in the cowpox served for a while to reassure the faithful; but ultimately these reassurances utterly broke down. Persons vaccinated by Jenner himself caught smallpox and died of smallpox. Then said Jenner, “I never pretended that vaccination was more than equivalent to an attack of smallpox, and smallpox after smallpox is far from being a rare phenomenon; indeed, there are hundreds of cases on record, and inquiry is continually bringing fresh ones to light.” True; very true; but what then of the assurance and prediction under which £30,000 of the people’s money had been pocketed—“The human frame, when once it has felt the influence of genuine cowpox, is never afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by smallpox”? Nay, more; Jenner descended even lower. He not only likened vaccination to smallpox, but to variolation, that is to the former practice of inoculation with smallpox; and as, he said, variolation was well known to be no sure defence against smallpox, why should people be offended when smallpox in like manner occasionally followed vaccination? Why, indeed! but then the promise ran—“The human frame when once it has felt the influence of genuine cowpox, is never afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by smallpox.” In a letter to his friend Moore in 1810, Jenner said, “Cases of smallpox after inoculation are innumerable.” And again, “Thousands might be collected; for every parish in the kingdom can give its case.” And he asked another correspondent, Dunning, in 1805, “Is it possible that any one can be so absurd as to argue on the impossibility of smallpox after vaccination!” And this from Jenner, who had deceived the nation in 1802 with the assurance that, “inoculated cowpox was attended with the singularly beneficial effect of rendering through life the person so inoculated perfectly secure from the infection of smallpox”!
Such was Jenner; such his inconsistency; and such the admissions he was driven to make under stress of failures many and manifest.