[CHAPTER XXI.]
MOSELEY, ROWLEY AND SQUIRREL.
It may be well to devote a chapter to those antagonists of Vaccination who, though right in their contention against cowpox, did more or less to discredit their cause by scurrility and extravagance. The faults of these men are frequently adduced as evidence of the absurd and brutal resistance with which Vaccination was encountered, but it is forgotten how intense was their provocation, and how the bad on one side was matched by the bad on the other. It was a contest between Smallpoxers and Cowpoxers, alike ignorant of the conditions of physical well-being. It is plain, however, in the light of our later experience, that much that was asserted by the Smallpoxers of the uselessness and harmfulness of cowpox must have been exactly and painfully true, though persistently and ferociously denied.
In the Edinburgh Review for October, 1806, appeared an article entitled “Pamphlets on Vaccine Inoculation,” which may be taken as a reflection of the state of the controversy at that date, and as an index to the chief offenders against propriety. The article was written by the editor, Francis Jeffrey, and was a product of that perspicuous intelligence, which reduced to order whatever was subjected to its action, in much the same way that a housemaid “sets to rights” a library by ranging the books according to their sizes and bindings, and assorting the papers so that they lie neatly disposed. As is the habit of able editors, a view of the variolous controversy was evolved that might be comfortably accepted and confidently repeated by his readers—the evolution of such rational mirage being regarded for the time as veracious matter-of-fact.
First we may take the reviewer’s evidence as to the extent and fury of the controversy—
The ample and public testimony offered in favour of Vaccination seemed for a while to set the question at rest; and, except in a few obscure pamphlets and communications to the medical journals, little was heard in opposition to it, till 1804, when Mr. Goldson of Portsmouth published six cases of Smallpox occurring after Vaccination, accompanied with observations, calculated to shake the confidence which was now very generally placed in the security of the Jennerian inoculation. These were answered by Mr. Ring and others, who endeavoured to show that, in some of his cases, Mr. Goldson’s patients had not had the genuine Cowpox in the first instance, and that in others, they had not had the genuine Smallpox thereafter. This part of the controversy was conducted with temper, and with a reasonable degree of candour. In the end of the same year however, Dr. Moseley published his treatise on the Cowpox, in which the ravings of Bedlam seemed to be blended with the tropes of Billingsgate. Dr. Rowley followed on the same side, and in the same temper, with 500 cases of “the beastly new diseases produced from Cowpox,” and attracted customers by two coloured engravings at the head of his work of “the Cowpoxed, ox-faced boy,” and the “Cowpoxed, mangey girl.” The battle now became general. The Reverend Rowland Hill thundered in defence of vaccination—Dr. Squirrel leaped from his cage upon the whole herd of vaccinators—Mr. Birch insisted upon stating his serious reasons for objecting to Cowpox—Drs. Thornton and Lettsom chanted pæans in its praise—Mr. Lipscomb strutted forward with a ponderous, wordy dissertation on its failures and mischiefs; and Messrs. Ring, Merriman, and Blair answered everybody; and exasperated all their opponents by their intemperance and personality. Charges of murder and falsehood were interchanged among the disputants without the smallest ceremony; the medical journals foamed with the violence of their contention; it raged in hospitals and sick-chambers; and polluted with its malignity the sanctity of the pulpit and the harmony of convivial philanthropy.
In the whole course of our censorial labours, we have never had occasion to contemplate a scene so disgusting and humiliating as is presented by the greater part of this controversy; nor do we believe that the virulence of political animosity or personal rivalry or revenge ever gave rise, among the lowest and most prostituted scribblers, to so much coarseness, illiberality, violence and absurdity as is here exhibited by gentlemen of sense and education discussing a point of professional science with a view to the good of mankind. At one time, indeed, we were so overpowered and confounded by the clamour and vehement contradictions of the combatants, that we were tempted to abandon the task we had undertaken, and leave it to some more athletic critic to collect the few facts and the little reasoning which could be discerned in this tempest of the medical world.
Furious was the controversy, but why was it furious? There are often great fights over little matters, but the reason is that the little matters are vitally related to the self-love of the combatants; and thus it was with the Cowpoxers and the Smallpoxers. The Cowpoxers set out with the absolute assertion that whoever submitted to their prescription would be secure from smallpox for life. Without proof, or with powerful sham proof, the assertion was endorsed by the mass of the medical profession, and there followed the conversion of the community in that sort of faith-panic which is described by Carlyle as Swarmery—
All the world assenting, and continually repeating and reverberating, there soon comes that singular phenomenon called Swarmery, or the gathering of men in swarms; and what prodigies they are in the habit of doing and believing when thrown into that miraculous condition! Singular, in the case of human swarms, with what perfection of unanimity and quasi-religious conviction the stupidest absurdities can be received as axioms of Euclid, nay, as articles of faith, which you are not only to believe, unless malignantly insane, but are (if you have any honour or morality) to push into practice, and, without delay see done, if your soul would live.[169]