[1120] Carter, u. s.
[1121] T. Proudfoot, M.D., Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ. July, 1822.
[1122] C. Stuart, u. s.
[1123] Dr Stokes, of Chesterfield, Med. and Phys. Journ. v. 17.
[1124] Benjamin Moseley, M.D., A Review of the Report of the Royal College of Physicians on Vaccination. 1808, p. 11. Jenner writing to James Moore, 18 Nov. 1812 (in Baron, II. 383), enumerates his various grievances against Pearson, “and finally, finding all tricking useless, his insinuations that vaccination is good for nothing.”
[1125] The equality of the two methods in this respect comes out incidentally in two reports of the Whitehaven Dispensary. In the report for 1796, when smallpox matter was in use, it is said that “173 were inoculated, all of whom, soliciting little medical assistance, recovered.” In 1801, when cowpox matter had been substituted in every case, the same phrase is used: “We seldom find any medical assistance required in this disease.”
[1126] The Beneficial Effects of Inoculation. Oxford University Prize Poem. Oxford, 1807. It seems probable that this was the “Oxford copy of verses on the two Suttons” that Coleridge (Biographia Literaria (1817), Pickering’s ed. II. 89) professed to quote from in the following passage; at least it would be remarkable if there had been printed another Oxford poem on the same subject and in the same manner: “As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudopoesy, or the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which bursts on the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to abstract terms. Such are the Odes to Jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion, and the like, in Dodsley’s collection and the magazines of the day, which seldom fail to remind me of an Oxford copy of verses on the two Suttons, commencing with
‘Inoculation, heavenly maid! descend!’”
It appears that Coleridge himself contemplated a poem on Cowpox Inoculation, which was to have exemplified what poetry should be, just as the 18th century Oxford poem on Smallpox Inoculation exemplified what poetry should not be. It was clearly more than the difference ’twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. Writing to Dr Jenner on 27 Sept. 1811, from 7, Portland-place, Hammersmith, he said: “Dear Sir, I take the liberty of intruding on your time, first, to ask you where and in what publication I shall find the best and fullest history of the vaccine matter as the preventive of the smallpox. I mean the year in which the thought first suggested itself to you (and surely no honest heart would suspect me of the baseness of flattery if I had said, inspired into you by the All-preserver, as a counterpoise to the crushing weight of this unexampled war), and the progress of its realization to the present day. My motives are twofold: first and principally, the time is now come when the ‘Courier’ ... is open and prepared for a series of essays on this subject; and the only painful thought that will mingle with the pleasure with which I shall write them is, that it should be at this day, and in this the native country of the discoverer and the discovery, be even expedient to write at all on the subject. My second motive is more selfish. I have planned a poem on this theme, which after long deliberation, I have convinced myself is capable in the highest degree of being poetically treated, according to our divine bard’s [Milton’s] own definition of poetry, as ‘simple, sensuous, (i.e. appealing to the senses by imagery, sweetness of sound, &c.) and impassioned, &c.’” The Life of Edward Jenner, M.D. By John Baron, M.D. 2 vols. II. 175.
[1127] Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. I. 507.