At this day it is easy to see that Pearson as against Jenner played his part badly, failing to recognise his proper advantage. Jenner’s prescription in the Inquiry of 1798 was not Cowpox. It was Horsegrease Cowpox. It was a disease of the horse inoculated on the cow. Cowpox per se he expressly rejected as useless, having no specific effect on the human constitution. Pearson and Woodville entertained Jenner’s prescription in good faith. They tried to generate pox on the cow with grease from the horse, but did not succeed. Reluctantly they abandoned Jenner’s prescription, and resorted to Cowpox.
Whilst Pearson and Woodville were without prejudice against Horsegrease Cowpox, it was otherwise with the public. The origin of Cowpox in Horsegrease was voted detestable, and had the origin been maintained, it is not improbable that the New Inoculation would have proved abortive.
This difficulty Pearson and Woodville, the chief promoters of the New Inoculation, cleared away. They had tried Horsegrease; they considered they had disproved Jenner’s assertion concerning it; and they were able to assure the public that they inoculated with Cowpox, and nothing but Cowpox, and had no connection with Horsegrease whatever. The public were satisfied; and Inoculation with Cowpox became the rage, fashionable and philanthropic.
What did Jenner do? Did he vindicate his prescription, the fruit of thirty years of incessant thought, observation and experiment? He did not. On the contrary he dropped it. He said not another word about it; and proceeded to claim Cowpox as employed by Pearson and Woodville as his discovery. In his petition to Parliament there was no mention of Horsegrease Cowpox; but Cowpox, with “its beneficial effect of rendering the persons inoculated therewith perfectly secure through life from the infection of Smallpox,” was set forth as the result of his most attentive and laborious investigation at the sacrifice of time, money, and professional advancement. We have to recollect that Jenner was inspired with what he called “the fond hope of enjoying independence,” and he was not slow to recognise, that if he stood by Horsegrease Cowpox his “fond hope” would be wrecked. The statement may seem incredible, but the fact of the transformation is manifest at large to any one who will take the trouble to compare Jenner’s Inquiry of 1798 with his Petition to the House of Commons in 1802.
Pearson failed to arrest the imposture. He might have said to Jenner, “Your discovery was not Cowpox: that was well known to every dairymaid in your neighbourhood. Your prescription was Horsegrease Cowpox. You condemned Cowpox, which Cowpox has nevertheless been brought into use by Woodville and me. Keep to your Horsegrease Cowpox; make what you can of it; and leave us alone.”
Had Pearson taken this course, he would have fixed Jenner to his discovery, such as it was, and have clearly defined and established his own and Woodville’s service in rendering the New Inoculation practicable and popular. But he failed to draw a firm line between Woodville and himself and Jenner, and to insist that they were operating, not only with a different pox, but with a form of pox by him rejected as useless. Through this default, he enabled Jenner to intrude into a province that was not his own, and to reap where he had not sown, and gather where he had not strawed. It is to be admitted that the facts as stated were all involved in Pearson’s Examination, but they were involved, and required picking out and sharper definition to give them effect. Truth is truth, but truth to have its rightful influence has to be made plain. It is of little avail to have a good cause at law if the means are wanting to place its goodness manifest and paramount over contention to the contrary.
This, too, may be observed: Pearson was not in condition to offer the manner of resistance specified. To have turned Jenner’s flank, it would have been necessary to discredit Cowpox; and Pearson was committed to Cowpox. Jenner had been familiar from youth with the dairymaids’ faith in Cowpox. Why then did he not advertise its virtue? Because it had been proved to him that the dairymaids’ confidence was illusory. His recommendation of Horsegrease Cowpox attested his distrust in Cowpox. If Pearson had asked himself, What induced Jenner to set aside Cowpox for Horsegrease Cowpox? the answer would have revealed to him a whole series of facts to the discredit of that prophylaxy of which he and Woodville had constituted themselves advocates. Thus, fettered by his own prepossession, Pearson was unable to deal effectually with Jenner without incurring a disenchantment fatal to his own enterprise.
When we recognise that Jenner’s prescription was a disease of the horse communicated to the cow, which Pearson and Woodville set aside for Cowpox, the controversy as to the originator of the use of Cowpox for inoculation loses significance. We have to assert peremptorily that Jenner had no claim to the use of Cowpox whatever. It is true that he advanced the claim in his Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation in 1801, and in his Petition to Parliament in 1802; but those who refer to his Inquiry of 1798 will require no further proof of his mendacity. That his claim to the use of Cowpox was entertained can only be ascribed to that indolence, ineptitude and ignorance on the part of the world whereon quacks presume and prosper.
It was Pearson and Woodville, I once more repeat, who diffused and popularised Cowpox; and Pearson’s inquiries left no doubt that the faith in Cowpox as a preventive of Smallpox was widely entertained; and that the substitution of Cowpox for Smallpox in inoculation was a mere question of time and accident. Mr. Downe of Bridport informed Pearson that a surgeon in his neighbourhood suffered discredit in practice because it was reported that he inoculated with Cowpox instead of Smallpox; and the papers of Mr. Nash, surgeon, of Shaftesbury proved that in 1781 he had the project of Cowpox Inoculation distinctly before him. The evidence of Benjamin Jesty, farmer of Downshay in the Isle of Purbeck, has usually been taken as most conclusive in relation to the immanence of the New Inoculation in the common mind. Jesty was invited to London by the conductors of the Original Vaccine Pock Institution, 44 Broad Street, Golden Square; and in August, 1805, they had him with his wife and two sons under examination. In their report[130] it is said—