Birch a sad wicked fellow employing agents to spread pestilence in London, whilst the good Jenner, capable of arresting the dismal work of death, sat impotent at Berkeley! Comment is superfluous. Quack, malicious and impudent, is written at large.
FOOTNOTES:
[160] Life of Jenner, vol. i. p. 541.
[161] A Practical Treatise on the Management and Diseases of Children. By Richard T. Evanson, M.D., and Henry Maunsell, M.D., Professors in the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland. Dublin, 1838.
[162] An Appeal to the Public on the Hazard and Peril of Vaccination, otherwise Cowpox, by the late John Birch, Esq., together with his Serious Reasons for uniformly objecting to Vaccination: and other Tracts by the same Author. 3rd Edition. London, 1817.
[163] Baron’s Life of Jenner, vol. ii., p. 382.
[CHAPTER XX.]
GOLDSON AND BROWN.
William Goldson, member of the London College of Surgeons, practising at Portsea, published a pamphlet in 1804[164] wherein he set forth a number of instances within his own experience of smallpox following vaccination by infection or inoculation. He did not turn against vaccination, but suggested that its prophylaxy might neither be so certain nor so enduring as at first asserted. Vaccination, he pointed out, had been carried into practice on a wave of enthusiasm, and it was not unreasonable to expect that on closer acquaintance some of the claims made for it should be subject to modification. Indeed so much was already admitted; for failures had led to the discrimination of spurious from genuine cowpox, and to the issue of new instructions as to the period of taking vaccine, “on which point, it was now said, depended the whole success of the operation.” Thus what was originally set forth as an operation for which any novice was competent, had developed into one of considerable delicacy with serious liability to miscarriage. Goldson, therefore, had fair reason to believe that his own observations and suggestions would meet with candid consideration, and, if verified, serve for general guidance in the practice of vaccination.
It is unnecessary to recite Goldson’s cases. Interesting at the time, they are now commonplace. He found that inoculation with smallpox was possible at an interval after vaccination, and that infection with smallpox was equally possible under the like circumstances. One case is noteworthy for its connection with Jenner. A seaman, named Clarke, was successfully vaccinated on 4th November, 1800, and, returning from a voyage to the West Indies was put to the variolous test on 24th March, 1802, when he sickened with smallpox and was sent to Haslar. To prove that his malady was really smallpox, several persons were variolated from him. The Committee of the House of Commons was sitting on Jenner’s first claim for public money, and Goldson wrote to Jenner to come to Haslar and see Clarke for himself; but Jenner was too astute to cumber himself with difficulties at a time when so much cash was in question. The case was mentioned to the Committee, but was treated as of no moment in presence of what they were pleased to regard as overwhelming evidence as to the perpetual virtue of vaccination.