Such are the leading varieties of virus used for vaccination—starting with Jenner’s horsegrease cowpox, then cowpox, then horsepox, then smallpox cowpox, and finishing with cowpox revived; each of them inscrutably modified in transit from child to child and from beast to beast. We are continually hearing of miracles wrought by vaccination in the past and present—especially the past, at home and abroad—especially abroad, the assumption being that vaccination is, and has been, everywhere the same. On the contrary, the condition precedent to serious consideration of any vaccine miracle is a definition of the variety of vaccination practised. It is, we admit, convenient for the administrators of the rite that it should pass for uniform, however multiform; for the practice has become a great and lucrative business—a world-wide poll-tax; and whatever the internal differences of the priesthood, it is their obvious interest to exhibit a decorous unanimity in presence of their customers. Hence the uneasiness recently excited by indiscreet advocates of “pure lymph from the calf” has been judiciously allayed, not by resistance, but by concession and damnation with faint praise; the commercial instinct dictating caution, for if the public did get behind the professional screen, and discovered the mysteries of pox, what might not befall the craft of vaccination!
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.
SMALLPOX MADE MILDER.
As vaccination failed to afford the protection originally guaranteed, various explanations were devised to enable those who had talked too loftily to eat humble pie without painful observation. One of the commonest excuses was that if vaccination did not prevent smallpox it made it milder: and inasmuch as no one knew, or could know, how severe any attack of smallpox would have been without vaccination, it was an assertion as indisputable as the reverse—namely, that vaccination not only made smallpox severer, but frequently induced the disease. There are many assertions with which there is no reckoning, for it would require omniscience to check them. Let us beware of such assertions. Let us neither make them, nor suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by them.