I have now completely made up my mind respecting London. I have done with it, and have again commenced as village doctor. I found my purse not equal to the sinking of a £1000 annually (which has actually been the case for several successive years) nor the gratitude of the public deserving such a sacrifice. How hard after what I have done, the toils I have gone through, and the anxieties I have endured in obtaining for the world a greater gift than man ever bestowed on the world before (excuse this burst of egotism), to be thrown by with a bare remuneration of my expenses.
It was hard! People who attributed to Jenner the greatest discovery ever made, the preservation of from 36,000 to 45,000 lives annually in the United Kingdom, and the salvation of the human race from smallpox, were indeed entitled to have dealt with him more handsomely. He had sympathisers and candid friends. “Your liberality and disinterestedness every one must admire,” wrote Mr. Benjamin Travers, “but you are sadly deficient in worldly wisdom. If you had undertaken the extinction of the smallpox yourself, with coadjutors of your own appointment, I am confident, you might have put £100,000 in your pocket; and the glory would have been as great and the benefit to the community the same.” How that £100,000 was used to tantalise him! and yet, as Dr. Pearson pointed out, never any one showed on what practicable terms the immense sum could have been earned by means of cowpox.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
THE ROYAL JENNERIAN SOCIETY.
Jenner, jealous of Pearson, was anxious to supersede the Institution for the Inoculation of the Vaccine Pock established by him in 1799; but Jenner was what Scots call “a feckless creature,” whose wishes rarely issue in fruit. After his success in Parliament, he did not remain in London to improve his opportunities, but retreated to domestic quiet at Berkeley and Cheltenham. His friends, however, were mindful of him, and Dr. Hawes, Mr. Addington, surgeon, Benjamin Travers, and Joseph Leaper met in Queen Street, City, 3rd December, 1802, and resolved to establish a “Jennerian Society for the Extinction of the Small-Pox.” Mr. Addington transmitted the resolution of the meeting to Jenner, saying—
We look to your direction and assistance, and feel very desirous of knowing when it is probable we may have the pleasure of seeing you in town.
Joseph Fox of Lombard Street, dentist and enthusiastic promoter of the new inoculation, also wrote to him, 4th December, soliciting his co-operation—
The plan which is in agitation is of the most extensive and liberal kind. It is even expected that the Royal countenance will be gained; but much depends upon thee. All are looking toward thee as the proper person to lay the foundation-stone. It would be well if this could be done in the course of the present year, particularly as it is the memorable time when the practice received parliamentary sanction.
But the ease-loving Jenner was not to be drawn. He wrote to Mr. Addington from Berkeley, 10th December, 1802—