On April 24, 1798, about two months before the publication of his pamphlet, Jenner repaired to London for the purposes of exhibiting the cow-pox and of demonstrating to his professional friends the truth of his assertions. Although he remained in the metropolis nearly three months he was unable to procure a single person on whom he could exhibit the vaccine disease.
Some of the cow-pox virus which Jenner carried with him was consigned to Mr. Cline, a London physician, who, toward the end of July, inserted it by two punctures into the hip of a child. A few days later he reported that “the cow-pox experiment had succeeded admirably.”
As happens in practically every important discovery in therapeutics, there arose soon in many quarters serious doubts as to the prophylactic powers of the method advocated by Jenner. Some men even went so far as to question the accuracy of his statements and to impugn his authority to advocate the practice of vaccination. On the other hand, there were many, and they too of the most learned and respectable, who immediately did justice to the merits of Jenner, and who cordially acknowledged the many important consequences which were involved in the subject that he had so ably and so modestly brought before them.
From a letter which Jenner wrote to one of his friends only a few weeks after he had published the “Inquiry” it appears that already at that early date he foresaw the probability that there would occur, in the further evolution of vaccination as a prophylactic measure, those very complications which, from that time to the present, have interfered so seriously with the universal acceptance of this procedure as a measure of vast beneficence to the human race. These so-called complications were, in the great majority of instances, manifestations of septic infection, brought about by carelessness in the handling of the inoculation wound; but this fact was not at all appreciated in Jenner’s time. During the years immediately following that in which the discovery of the new procedure was announced to the physicians of England vaccination made fairly rapid progress in public favor. Already as early as in June, 1800, Jenner, while on a visit to Oxford, was there presented, by the leading physicians of that city, with a testimonial in which it was declared that cow-pox is an effectual prophylactic agent against the small-pox. Two years later the English Parliament voted Jenner a grant of £10,000 as a reward for the very valuable discovery which he had made and for his prolonged labors in rendering the procedure of great utility to the public.
Strange as it may appear to those who are not familiar with the lives of the most meritorious and most unselfish physicians of bygone centuries this bestowal of £10,000 by Parliament upon Jenner did not add materially to his comfort; in the long run it rather detracted from it. Some of his friends, shortly after he had received the Parliamentary grant of money, induced him to give up his country practice and establish himself in the fashionable part of London; they maintained that his widespread reputation as the discoverer of vaccination and as the physician most capable of conducting this operation in the safest and most effective manner, would speedily bring him a large increase in private practice. Such, however, did not prove to be the case; and Jenner—who, unfortunately, had been overpersuaded to follow this advice,—after the lapse of three or four years, and appreciating the fact that his income was not large enough for such a style of living, removed his residence, first to Cheltenham and not long afterward to Berkeley. He died of cerebral apoplexy in the spring of 1823.
A medal commemorating the discovery of vaccination is pictured in the figure which faces page [108].
BOOK VI
AWAKENING OF THE CHEMISTS, PHYSIOLOGISTS
AND PATHOLOGISTS