The Testimonial had great effect on the public mind: to the majority it was irresistible. As Ring said, “It confounded the enemies of the new practice”—adding in his characteristic vernacular, “and it secured the triumph of reason over the scruples of prejudice and ignorance, and the base manœuvres of sordid and self-interested men.”[120] Thus early was it discovered that an opponent of Vaccination was an ignoramus or a rascal. Ring’s easy arrogance is concisely illustrated in this deliverance—
It is no want of candour to affirm that those who are hostile to Vaccine Inoculation, are total strangers to it; those who are doubtful, are almost total strangers to it; and I defy the whole world to produce one single instance of a person that has had any experience of the disease, who is not a decided friend to the practice.[121]
Jenner recognised his thorough-going supporter, and used his loyalty to strike at Pearson and others who failed to abide in like subservience. He wrote to a foreign physician—
The discovery which I had the happiness to announce to the world is much indebted to Mr. Ring’s ardent zeal and indefatigable exertions for the rapid progress it has made; while some of those who vainly conceived themselves instrumental in promoting its adoption have in reality from their ignorance and indiscretion, rather retarded than accelerated its progress.[122]
Wonder is frequently expressed over the rapid conversion of England and the world to Vaccination, but, as I have before remarked, wonder is much reduced when we set the circumstances clearly before us. Inoculation with smallpox to avert smallpox was the practice of the time, and it was not a universal practice simply because it was troublesome and dangerous: everybody believed in the saving rite; and where evaded it was as onerous and perilous duties are always and everywhere evaded by the indolent and cowardly. Inoculation with cowpox was introduced to the public as a substitute for inoculation with smallpox, equally efficient or more efficient, and neither troublesome nor dangerous. Thus easy and seductive was the transition from the one practice to the other. Jenner had no serious battle to fight: the contest was decided in the years during which inoculation with smallpox struggled for prevalence. The warfare that subsequently cost him so much irritation was conducted by the conservatives of Inoculation, as experience revealed the inefficiency and mischiefs of Vaccination. Resistance such as is now offered to Vaccination on physiological grounds there was none, so far as I can discover. It had apparently occurred to no one that smallpox was a consequence of the transgression of the laws of health, and was preventible by submission to those laws. It was imagined that the disease came by the will of God, or the devil, or by force of fate, and that to dodge it by medical craft was the utmost that was practicable. Unless we bear in mind these conditions of the public intelligence, we shall misapprehend the demeanour of the people who so cordially welcomed Jenner’s advertisement. It is always a mistake to criticise the conduct of an earlier generation by the light of a later. We turn history to ill account when we use it to nourish our self-complacency; for the probability is that had we lived with our forefathers, we should have done exactly as they did.
Some will ask, How did it ever come to pass that so many doctors in 1800 signed Ring’s testimonial certifying that inoculation with cowpox was a sure and everlasting protection from smallpox when they had not, and could not have, any experience to warrant their assertion? True, but they had an illusory experience by which they were beguiled, namely, the Variolous Test. Hundreds were inoculated with cowpox and subsequently with smallpox, and were also exposed to smallpox contagion, and as the disease did not take, it was concluded it could never take, and that the subjects of the operation were fortified for ever. The fallacy is now manifest, but it was by no means manifest in 1800, and all manner of men received and propagated the fable with energetic sincerity. It was once admitted that a tub full of water did not overflow when a fish was slipped into it, and many explanations were current of the curious phenomenon until a sceptical spirit suggested that the experiment be tried. A like spirit might have suggested that it was expedient to wait and see whether cowpox was indeed a perpetual defence against smallpox, inasmuch as nature had an awkward habit of confuting prognostications apparently irrefragable.
The ease with which it was asserted cowpox inoculation could be performed, coupled with its harmlessness, not to say wholesomeness, and the absolute security it afforded against smallpox, induced benevolent busybodies to set up as vaccinators all over the country. What the kindly quack delights in is something cheap and handy with a touch of mystery and the promise of immeasurable advantage—conditions which the new practice completely fulfilled. The memoirs of the time, especially of the Evangelical party, abound with instances in which this good soul and that good soul had vaccinated so many hundreds or thousands, delivering them from the peril of an awful disease. Thus in the Gentleman’s Magazine, for December, 1800, we read—
Two respectable families near Manchester have within these few months inoculated upwards of 800 of the neighbouring poor from two months old to twenty years with uniform success. Twenty of them were subjected to the variolous test, and all were found proof against the disease.