That the said Inoculation hath already checked the progress of the Smallpox, and from its nature must finally annihilate that dreadful disorder.
That the series of experiments by which this discovery was developed and completed have not only occupied a considerable portion of your Petitioner’s life, and have not merely been a cause of great expense and anxiety to him, but have so interrupted him in the ordinary exercise of his profession as materially to abridge its pecuniary advantages without their being counter balanced by those derived from the new practice.
Your Petitioner, therefore, with the full persuasion that he shall meet with that attention and indulgence of which this Honourable House may deem him worthy, humbly prays this Honourable House to take the premises into consideration, and to grant him such remuneration as to their wisdom shall seem meet.
Patriot Grattan asked for £100,000, was awarded £50,000, and took £47,500: “true patriot Jenner deserves more,” said Lord Sherborne; but Jenner had not courage for the demand. What, however, was undefined in cash was made up for in pretension.
As we read Jenner’s petition we note (1) the Discovery; (2) its Disclosure and Diffusion; (3) the Expense thereby incurred; and (4) the Prophecies; and under these heads it is to be observed—
1.—It was no discovery of Jenner’s that cowpox was inoculable and preventive of smallpox. That was a rural superstition. Nor, be it again repeated, did he ever become responsible for that rural superstition. Recognising its futility, he deliberately set it aside, and recommended a disease of the horse, transmitted through the cow, for inoculation. It was Pearson, who disliking Jenner’s prescription, brought cowpox into vogue; whereon Jenner, fearing that he might be cut out of the enterprise, dropped his specific, adopted the cowpox he had rejected, and claimed Pearson’s work as the development of his own.
2.—That he disclosed his discovery was true, but it was not the discovery set forth in the petition. Moreover the merit of disclosure in such a case is measured by the advantage of concealment; and what could Jenner have taken by concealment? The conditions of successful quackery were not present in the secret practice of inoculation with horsegrease cowpox.
3.—That the discovery occupied a considerable portion of Jenner’s life, and was attended with great expense and loss of practice, is answered by reference to his Inquiry. With what loss of time, loss of money, and loss of practice could the series of cases therein set forth have been attended? And after 1798, he confessed he was able to achieve little further.
4.—As for the prophecies about the absolute security afforded by cowpox with the final extermination of smallpox, we may estimate the worth of such vapouring by the asserted check at that time, 1801, administered to the disease, when as yet an insignificant fraction of the population had been subjected to the New Inoculation, and a fraction, too, least likely to suffer from smallpox.
Petitions are petitions, and not designed for over-much scrutiny. In them truth is rarely to be looked for otherwise than warped to personal ends. The policy of a petition is to claim in excess with a view to obtain a larger concession. Jenner’s petition was a more than usually flagrant instance of this policy, with the disadvantage that much of its untruth passed into currency as matter of fact.