Smallpox unchecked by Vaccination, is one of the most terrible and destructive of all diseases as regards the danger of infection, the proportion of deaths among those attacked, and the permanent injury to the survivors.
Your Committee believe that if Vaccination had not been general, the epidemic [then prevalent] would have become a pestilence, raging with the destructive force of the Plague of the middle ages.
What is beyond evidence is beyond refutation; and the imaginations of M.P.’s, dull though they be, not unfrequently prevail over their intelligence.
To set aside the mass of testimony adduced by Jenner’s friends before the Commons’ Committee in 1802 is sometimes described as a hopeless undertaking; but the answer to such a boast is, that experience has nullified the essential part of that testimony, and that there is little left to account for. No well-informed medical practitioner now believes what the Committee was led to believe, that to be inoculated with cowpox was to be secure from smallpox for life. The security, where still credited, is subject to so many qualifications that the primitive inoculators with cowpox would have thought such protection not worth paying for, still less of exulting over as the greatest discovery ever made in medicine. Nor would many now admit the validity of the Variolous Test which then carried conviction with irresistible force. Inoculation with smallpox was in itself an uncertain operation, and that it should fail after inoculation with cowpox, ere the poisoning of the blood had been worked off, was in nowise surprising. The exposure of vaccinated subjects to smallpox infection was in like manner deceptive; and it was conveniently forgotten that all manner of people were exposed to contagion with impunity in the usual circumstances of life. Taking a year of exceptional smallpox in London, such as Dr. Lettsom set forth as ordinary, when 18,000 were affected and 3000 died (that is one in six), there were in the million of inhabitants 982,000 who escaped. How did they escape? A multitude must have come into immediate contact with the sick: How did they remain unscathed? The question is simple, but it is crucial. If smallpox were like fire, and men, women, and children like fuel, why did not all burn? Under what prophylaxy did they abide secure? Again in this connection, we must not lose sight of the magic of faith. Things being equal, two persons exposed to smallpox, one confident that he was invulnerable through vaccination, and the other apprehensive of danger, the chances are, that the fearful would be attacked whilst the fearless would have his faith justified in immunity.
In considerations thus obvious it is not difficult to understand how the testimony delivered to the Committee had a semblance as of veracious Nature. Any one who has studied the history of remedies, or the various quackeries within his own observation, will know how easy it is to conjure up testimony, with asseverations presumptuous to question, which by-and-by are gradually discredited and ultimately disappear in forgetfulness. I have, therefore, no disposition to be hard on the men of 1802. From our vantage of experience we see how they were led astray, and recognise the pressure of the influences under which they acted. Moreover a remedy that bore the promise of relief from the pest of smallpox inoculation came with strong seduction. What a pest that inoculation was, how it was loathed, and how it was submitted to under the persuasion of duty are written at large in the domestic memoirs of last century. Every mother among the upper and middle classes was persuaded that it was necessary for her children to undergo the variolous ordeal—an ordeal that involved the deliberate introduction of smallpox into her household. It was hateful, it was intolerable, and yet it had to be endured! The doctors minimised the risks to the uttermost, but what they really believed plainly appeared when vaccination presented itself as an alternative. Then smallpox inoculation was denounced by its former practitioners with a fervour that contrasted painfully with their antecedent professions; whilst parents heard with indescribable satisfaction that absolute life-long security from smallpox was henceforward insured at the price of a trifling operation attended by no peril whatever, and with distinct benefit to health. To make the contrast clear I subjoin copy of a hand-bill that was posted on walls and circulated by thousands in London and the country at the time of which I write, 1801-2.
A TABLE SHEWING THE ADVANTAGES OF
VACCINE INOCULATION.
| The Natural Smallpox. | The Inoculated Smallpox. | The Inoculated Cowpock. |
| I. The natural Smallpox is a loathsome, infectious, painful, and fatal disease. It is confined to no climate, but rages in every quarter of the world, and destroys a tenth part of mankind. | I. The inoculated Smallpox also is loathsome, infectious, painful, and sometimes fatal; and, when partially adopted, spreads the contagion, and increases the mortality of the disease. | I. The inoculated Cowpock scarcely deserves the name of a disease. It is not infectious; and, in the opinion of the most experienced practitioners has never proved fatal. |
| II. Those who survive the ravages of that dreadful distemper, often survive only to be the victims of other maladies, or to drag out a miserable existence worse than death. | II. It sometimes occasions the same maladies as the natural Smallpox. | II. It occasions no other disease. On the contrary, it has often been known to improve health, and to remedy those diseases under which the patient before laboured. |
| III. This cruel and lamentable disorder leaves behind it pits, scars, and other blemishes and bodily deformities which embitter life. | III. It frequently leaves behind it the same blemishes and deformities as the natural Smallpox, which are the more deplorable as they are brought on by a voluntary act. | III. It leaves behind no blemish, but a Blessing—one of the greatest ever bestowed on man—a perfect security against the future infection of the Smallpox. |
From this faithful statement of the advantages attending Vaccine Inoculation, it must appear evident to every unprejudiced person, that it is the duty as well as the interest of every parent, of every individual, and of every nation, to adopt the practice, and to hasten
THE EXTERMINATION OF THE SMALLPOX.