My perplexity really amounts to agitation. On the one hand, unwilling to come to town myself for the sake of practice, and, on the other, fearful that the practice I have recommended may fall into the hands of those who are incapable of conducting it, I am thrown into a state that was not at first perceptible as likely to happen to me; for, believe me, I am not callous to all the feelings of those wounds which, from misrepresentation, might fall on my reputation; on the contrary, no nerves could feel more acutely; and they now are actually in a tremor from anticipation.
How very few are capable of conducting physiological experiments! I am fearful that before we thoroughly understand what is cowpox matter, and what is not, some confusion may arise, for which I shall, unjustly, be made answerable.[102]
If his correspondent had been a man of sense, he might have replied—
Why so much ado about nothing! You recommend that horsegrease cowpox be substituted for smallpox in cases of inoculation. It is a simple prescription, easily determined altogether apart from you, and there is no reason why you should work yourself into such a flutter.
But Jenner was not the unimpassioned man of science, who can leave truth to take care of itself, and submit when truth contradicts his prepossessions. Dr. Ingenhousz, an Anglicised Dutchman (born at Breda, 1730), with reputation as electrician and chemist, read the Inquiry with considerable amazement. He was himself an inoculator of mark, having been selected by the Empress Maria Teresa to operate upon the imperial family of Austria; and by her had been rewarded (after the pattern of Catharine of Russia and Dimsdale) with a pension of £600 a year, and the titles of Aulic Councillor and Imperial Physician. Naturally, therefore, Ingenhousz had a lively interest in Jenner’s project, and being on a visit to the Marquis of Lansdowne at his seat in Wiltshire, addressed him as follows—
Bowood Park, 12th October, 1798.
As soon as I arrived at Bowood, I thought it my duty to inquire concerning the extraordinary doctrines contained in your publication, as I knew the cowpox was well known in this county.
The first gentleman to whom I addressed myself was Mr. Alsop, an eminent practitioner at Calne, who made me acquainted with Mr. Henry Stiles, a respectable farmer at Whitley, who, thirty years ago, bought a cow at a fair, which he found to be infected with what he called the cowpox. This cow soon infected the whole dairy; and he himself, by milking the infected cow, caught the disease which you describe, and that in a very severe way, accompanied with pain, stiffness, and swelling of the axillary glands. Having recovered from the disease, and all the sores dried, he was inoculated with smallpox by Mr. Alsop. The disease took place, a great many pox came out, and he communicated the infection to his father who died of it.
This being an incontrovertible fact, cannot fail to make some impression on your mind, and excite you to inquire further on the subject before you venture finally to decide in favour of a doctrine, which may do great mischief should it prove erroneous.