[CHAPTER XIX.]
JOHN BIRCH.
It is part of the Jennerian legend that the introduction of vaccination was resisted by prejudice, fury and fanaticism, and that the practice made its way by sheer force of its proven efficacy. The statement is widely at variance with facts. Vaccination was accepted with instant acclamation by the medical profession, the royal family, and the public as an infallible and harmless preventive of smallpox; and the subsequent course of experience was to disprove alike its harmlessness and infallibility. That in some cases vaccination was encountered with absurdity and violence lay in the nature of things, even as it was advocated with absurdity, violence and prevarication. It is always easy to raise a laugh by the exhibition of the extravagance of either side in a hot dispute, but to what purpose? It would have been no cause for surprise if some had been moved to scorn by the facile credulity with which Jenner’s magical prescription was so rashly accepted, but the world to which he appealed had no scientific acquaintance with the laws of health, and it was in nowise marvellous that, convinced of the prophylaxy of inoculated smallpox, they should have been overcome by the plausibility of inoculated cowpox. Yet were not all overcome, nor were all who resisted the popular craze furious. There was John Birch, for example, surgeon to St. Thomas’s Hospital, who with calmness and cogency steadily protested against the introduction of “the new disease styled cowpox;” and we may read his letters and pamphlets and fail to note a fiery epithet or unkindly imputation. People who talk as if all who opposed Jenner were steeped in ignorance and perversity can know nothing of John Birch.
Although satisfied with variolous inoculation, he had no objection to vaccination in itself. He thought it fair that experiments with cowpox should be tried, and the verdict of experience submitted to; but he complained that experience was anticipated and success proclaimed ere it was possible for the truth to be known, whilst every objector was overwhelmed with abuse. As an illustration of the unwarrantable persuasion that prevailed in favour of the new practice before there was time to justify it, Birch mentions that at the anniversary dinner at Guy’s Hospital in 1802, he was surprised to find the usual business set aside to secure signatures to Jenner’s petition for a vote of money from Parliament, and that after dinner toasts, songs, and compliments in honour of Vaccinia were the order of the day. Booksellers, he relates, declined to publish anything against vaccination, and editors of newspapers and magazines would not suffer a word to appear to its disparagement. Even the Post Office carried the cowpox and correspondence of the Royal Jennerian Society gratis until the collapse of the concern in 1806. Those who resorted to doctors and hospitals for inoculation with smallpox got cowpox instead in spite of assertions to the contrary. Church vied with chapel in recommending the new practice. The Archbishop of Canterbury was called upon to issue a letter directing the clergy to recommend vaccination from the pulpit, but, with the wariness of office, sent his chaplain to Birch to hear the other side, and the chaplain retired with the judicious observation, “His Grace must not commit the Church.” Many clergymen, however, not only preached vaccination, but practised it with restless assiduity. Erasmus Darwin was not without hope that baptism and vaccination might be associated. He wrote to Jenner from Derby, 24th February, 1802—
As by the testimony of innumerable instances, the Vaccine Disease is so favourable to young children, in a little time it may occur that the christening and vaccination of children may always be performed on the same day.
The Vaccine Disease so favourable to young children! The assertion affords a vivid glimpse of the prevalent enchantment. “The idea of connecting religious services with vaccination,” says Baron, “had occurred to several individuals in this country as well as on the Continent.”[160]
I viewed with indignant scorn [wrote Birch], the ungenerous artifice adopted by the Jennerian Society of sticking up in every Station House, in the Vestries of fanatical Chapels, and in Sunday Schools, that false Comparative View of the effects of Smallpox and Cowpox representing to the gaping multitude a frightful picture of Inoculation with the supposed misery attendant on it; and exhibiting representations equally false and exaggerated of the blessings of Vaccination.
The women were not behind the clergy in diffusing vaccine salvation. They were Jenner’s most devoted allies. He took pains to teach ladies to operate with “a light hand” so as not to draw blood, and boasted that one of his pupils had ten thousand patients to her credit, rescued from the terror and peril of smallpox!
As Birch observed, it was not a question of medicine or of surgery that he and others had to deal with, but an outburst of enthusiasm in which the methods and arguments of science were swept heedlessly away. Any testimony to the credit of vaccination was accepted with alacrity, whilst the facts to its discredit were denied or explained away. This recklessness of procedure was most painfully manifest in the conduct of the Committee of the House of Commons which sat on Jenner’s first petition for money in 1802—
The number of witnesses in support of the application [wrote Birch] was 40, but out of the forty 28 spoke from mere hearsay, and not from knowledge acquired in practice; while the three who spoke against it were heard impatiently, though they corroborated their evidence with proofs.
Birch wished to know what cowpox was. Jenner had said it was derived from horsegrease, but “that origin is proved to be erroneous, and is now given up, even by his best friends. On all hands it is admitted,” Birch continued, “that it is not a disease of the cow, but communicated to the cow by the milker. No cow that is allowed to suckle her own calf ever has the complaint.” What, then, is the disease in the milker? asked Birch. Is it smallpox? Is it lues venerea? Is it itch? A man came to St. Thomas’s Hospital from an adjacent dairy with a hand and arm covered with ulcerations. He said several of the milkers and the cows’ teats were affected in the same way, and he was told they had got cowpox. Birch called one of his country pupils and asked him what was wrong with the man. “It is itch—rank itch,” was his reply. A box of Jackson’s ointment for the itch was given to him, and at the end of a week he reappeared at the Hospital cured. If cowpox be itch, argued Birch—