[182] Baron’s Life of Jenner, vol. ii. p. 161.

[183] Baron’s Life of Jenner, vol. ii. p. 158.

[184] Pettigrew’s Memoirs of J. C. Lettsom, M.D. London, 1817. Vol. iii. p. 405.

[ CHAPTER XXIV.]
DR. JOHN WALKER.

Jenner’s references to the good effects of vaccination in London were curiously inconsistent. That vaccination in which he professed to rejoice was chiefly the work of Dr. John Walker, whose practice he had denounced as so widely at variance with what he considered correct, that even the wreck of the Royal Jennerian Society was not thought too heavy a price to pay for deliverance from complicity with him. The London Vaccine Institution, established in 1806 by Walker and his friends, was responsible for the large majority of vaccinations effected in the metropolis. Walker was a pure enthusiast, of boundless energy, with a craze for vaccinating. Adverse results had no effect upon him: he did not deny, but simply did not recognise them, and held on prophesying and practising with mechanical persistency. Nevertheless, he ran aground. The income of the Institution had dwindled to less than £100 a year when Andrew Johnstone, a Cumberland man, a school-fellow of Walker, came to his assistance. With a commercial eye he surveyed the situation. He perceived that though vaccination had fallen into disrepute, there remained many believers who only required stirring up and solicitation to provide funds to keep Walker going and to yield the collector a satisfactory commission. As the Royal Jennerian Society had ceased to exist for any active purpose in 1810, nothing remaining “but a Patronage, a Presidency, and an unorganised body of Subscribers and Governors,” it occurred to him that it would be good policy to annex these to the revived enterprise, and in due course a union was effected, and the London Vaccine Institution and Royal Jennerian Society became the title to conjure with. An attempt was made to secure Jenner for President, but that was too bold a stroke. He thus answered the application—

Cheltenham, 3rd September, 1813.

Although it must be evident that every institution which has for its object the extension of Vaccine Inoculation, must have my best wishes for its success, yet, for reasons which on reflection must be obvious, you must see the impossibility of my accepting the offered appointment.

Highly impressive were the Reports of the reconstituted Institution under the patronage of the Corporation of the City of London with the City Arms on the covers. Subsequently the King, George IV., appeared as patron, and the City Arms gave place to the Royal Arms. Among the presidents were the Archbishop of Canterbury, four or five Dukes (one of them Wellington), half a dozen Marquises and as many Bishops, about a score of Earls, with M.P.’s and pious and philanthropic notables many. So much was due to the tact of Andrew Johnstone, who understood the use of names, who never dropped one of the least influence, and, spite of Jenner’s ill-will, dealt with his honours and countenance as though they belonged to the Institution. Business is business, he would have said, and holds no reckoning with pique and dislike. Nevertheless the financial results did not correspond with the overpowering patronage. The income of the Institution never attained £1000 a year, whilst the bills for advertising and printing sometimes approached £500. In the Report for 1827 we find the operations thus summarised—

Vaccinated during 1826 by Dr. Walker,4,217
From the beginning, 1803,65,750
By appointed Inoculators in London and environs in 1826,16,999
From the beginning,237,119
By appointed Inoculators in the country in 1826,21,261
From the beginning,548,430