| Years. | Burials from all diseases. | From Smallpox. | From Fevers. | From Measles. |
| 1811 | 17,043 | 751 | 906 | 235 |
| 1812 | 18,295 | 1287 | 783 | 427 |
| 1813 | 17,322 | 898 | 714 | 550 |
| 1814 | 19,783 | 638 | 908 | 817 |
| 1815 | 19,560 | 725 | 1309 | 711 |
| 1816 | 20,316 | 653 | 1299 | 1106 |
| 1817 | 19,968 | 1051 | 1299 | 725 |
| 1818 | 19,705 | 421 | 1170 | 728 |
| 1819 | 19,228 | 712 | 1150 | 695 |
| 1820 | 19,348 | 792 | 1156 | 720 |
| ——— | ——— | ——— | —— | |
| 190,568 | 7928 | 10,694 | 6714 | |
| 1801-1810 | 185,737 | 12,534 | 16,204 | 5680 |
| 1791-1800 | 196,801 | 18,477 | 19,880 | 2707 |
From this statement we see that the decrease in London smallpox that set in toward the close of the 18th Century was maintained; but that vaccination had aught to do with the decrease there is no reason to believe—unless in so far as the new practice discouraged variolation. How, we ask, could the vaccination of one-tenth of the Londoners (if so many) reduce the smallpox among nine-tenths? We have also to observe that mortality from fevers abated in common with smallpox; and it cannot be pretended that that abatement was also due to vaccination! The rational assumption is, that what diminished fevers in London, likewise diminished smallpox. Nor should we overlook the fact, that as the deaths from smallpox declined, those from measles increased; nor the probability that many deaths formerly ascribed to smallpox were derived from measles, and that part of the decline in one column is accounted for by the increase in the other.
Jenner’s assertion, that the national mortality from smallpox had been reduced from more than 40,000 to less than 6000 annually, had no basis whatever in reality. As we know, the 40,000 deaths were got by multiplying the deaths of a bad year of London smallpox by the population of the United Kingdom—as if London were the standard of England, Ireland, and Scotland! How he obtained the reduced number of 6000 we are left to conjecture. In reviewing Jenner’s writings we are startled with his inconsistencies, and scarcely less with the carelessness and credulity of his adherents. He set out with the common knowledge that cowpox did not prevent smallpox, and for that reason he substituted pox generated by horsegrease on the cow. Horsegrease cowpox could not, however, be procured on demand; and was, moreover, disliked on the score of its origin; and cowpox was resorted to by Pearson and Woodville, and diffused everywhere with acclamation; and Jenner did not only not object, but took credit, and actually was allowed to take credit for the pox he had described as ineffective for the purpose designed! By and bye cowpox from horsegrease, or horsepox, according to the original recipe, was obtained and brought into circulation with Jenner’s sympathy, if without his open approval—he discerning that praise and pay were not to be had from that notion. After a while, horsegrease, or horsepox, was used for inoculation without the intervention of the cow; and that too entered into currency as vaccine, Jenner himself employing and distributing it, although according to his Inquiry it was not to be trusted to prevent smallpox.
I repeat these facts, even at the risk of tedium, because it is essential to have them clearly apprehended. For at least three descriptions of virus Jenner stood responsible, namely—
I.—Horsegrease Cowpox—the virus warranted in his Inquiry.
II.—Cowpox, known by Jenner to be ineffective in preventing smallpox, but favoured by the medical profession and the public.
III.—Horsegrease (said to have been horsepox), also described by Jenner as ineffective, but latterly used and diffused by him.
To which of these did he attribute the success claimed for vaccination? Apparently to all indifferently; but if one were as good as the others, why did he not say so, and proceed to explain how it was that cowpox did not save the Gloucestershire milk-maids, nor horsegrease the farriers from smallpox? Was it that the power to put such questions, and to answer them, does not consist with the quack’s intelligence; and that in his lucre he rests content? Observe, too, how when credit was to be had for London vaccination, Jenner took it, though at mortal enmity with the chief agent in the work, repudiating Walker’s practice as subversive of principles he considered essential to success.
Jenner’s final publication in 1822 had nothing to do with vaccination, but was a bid for fame in a new direction.[204] It was an attempt to originate a new method of cure by irritating the skin with tartarated antimony. He had dabbled with the chemical when a young man, and John Hunter had suggested that his preparation should be sold and puffed as Jenner’s Tartar Emetic. In his last years he returned to it, and produced a series of cases to prove how many diseases might be alleviated and removed by using it as a counter-irritant—just as in the Inquiry he recommended cowpox inoculation with the same intention. The matter does not concern us further than to observe that the vesicles and scars produced by tartarated antimony are almost indistinguishable from those of vaccination; and that Hufeland, the German Nestor of Medicine, taught and proved that tartar emetic was every whit as effective against smallpox as cowpox—an opinion from which I see no reason to dissent.