ORIGIN OF THE TERM VACCINATION.
A new practice wants a new name, and it was some time before one was found for Inoculation with Cowpox. Dr. Walker made use of Vacciolation and to Vacciolate in 1802; but it was Richard Dunning, surgeon, of Plymouth, who introduced Vaccination and to Vaccinate. Jenner writing to Dunning, 2nd April, 1804, observed—
The useful terms Vaccination and to Vaccinate, are undoubtedly yours, and as such I pronounced them at a meeting of the Royal Jennerian Society, when an M.D. present mentioned them as imported from the Continent.[135]
Vaccination is not as yet a term accepted everywhere. Among the uneducated we hear of being “cut for the cowpock,” or simply of being “cut.”
Whilst Vaccination was a useful word, it was, and is, often misapplied. Jenner’s prescription of Horsegrease Cowpox was Equination rather than Vaccination; and when virus from the horse was employed neat, Equination was the accurate designation without question. Again, when virus was generated from Smallpox on heifers, the subsequent inoculation of the human subject was not Vaccination but Variolation, or at least Variolous Vaccination. The virus in public use at this day derived from Horsegrease Cowpox, Cowpox, Horsepox, Smallpox, Smallpox Cowpox, etc., etc., inoculated from arm-to-arm, in series prolonged and unsearchable, is called Vaccination; but it is Vaccination in faith or fancy, evidence to anything but uncertainty being unattainable.
FOOTNOTES:
[131] Baron’s Life of Jenner, Vol. i. p. 577.
[132] History and Practice of Vaccination, p. 212. By James Moore. London, 1817.
[133] Life of John Walker, M.D., p. 88. By John Epps, M.D. Lond., 1831.