I was about to commence practice: all the world was before me. In seeking the acquaintance of Jenner I was impelled mainly by a desire to do homage to a man whose public and private character had already secured my warmest admiration. I little thought that it would so speedily lead to an intimacy, and ultimately to a friendship, which terminated only at his death, and placed me in a relationship to his memory that no one could have anticipated. The greatness of his fame, his exalted talents, and the honours heaped upon him by all the most distinguished public bodies of the civilised world, while they made me desirous of offering my tribute of respect to him, forbade the expectation of more than such an acknowledgment as a youth, circumstanced as I was, might have expected. I soon, however, perceived that I had to do with an individual who did not square his manners by the cold formality of the world. He condescended as to an equal; the restraint and embarrassment that might naturally have been felt in the presence of one so eminent vanished in an instant. The simple dignity of his aspect, the kind and familiar tone of his language, and the perfect sincerity and good faith manifested in all he said and did, could not fail to win the heart of anyone not insensible to such qualities. Though more than twenty years have elapsed since this interview took place, I remember it, and all its accompaniments, with the most perfect accuracy. He was dressed in a blue coat, white waistcoat, nankeen breeches, and white stockings. All the tables in his apartment were covered with letters and papers on the subject of vaccination, and the establishment of the National Vaccine Institution. He talked to me of the excellent article which had lately appeared in the Edinburgh Review, relative to the vaccine controversy. He spoke with great good humour also of the conduct of the anti-vaccinists, and gave me some pamphlets illustrative of the controversy then going on. The day before he had had an interview with the Princess of Wales, and he showed me a watch which her Royal Highness had presented to him on that occasion.[205]
The passage is a long one, but it has some value in itself, and exhibits Baron’s habitual attitude toward his hero. In his private relations, Jenner was amiable, but it is with his public life that we are concerned, and find so reprehensible. Mischievous leaders and teachers are frequently distinguished by private graces; and austere personal virtue is frequently associated with bland indifference to conventional immoralities; and we need not go far to discover counterparts of Jenner in ordinary life. Nothing is commoner than suavity combined with self-love that is malignant and mendacious when thwarted. All is pleasant as long as admiration prevails, but with dissent or resistance the sunny temper vanishes, and clouds of contempt and fury overspread the spiritual sky. A sharp test of character is a man’s disposition to his adversaries; and Jenner was never magnanimous. His conduct to Pearson, Woodville, and Walker has been sufficiently described; and similar jealousy and spitefulness were displayed to whoever dared to impugn his infallibility in the prevention of smallpox. No one, for instance, could have brought forward the fact that smallpox occasionally succeeded vaccination with more simple good faith than Goldson; yet Jenner wrote of him with insufferable insolence—an insolence that is thrown into stronger relief by the knowledge that what Goldson testified is accepted at this day, even by vaccinators, as indisputable matter-of-course. His bully, too, John Ring, attacked Goldson, and Jenner, in writing to Dunning, 23rd December, 1804, thus excused his brutality—
You speak of Ring and Goldson. Recollect there was not time to be cool. What lover of Vaccination—what man, well acquainted with its nature, and that of Smallpox, could read Goldson’s book, and lay it down coolly? Ring, the moment he read it, and what indeed was infinitely worse than the book itself, its murderous harbinger—the advertisement, instantly charged his blunderbuss, and fired it in the face of the author. I must freely confess, I do not feel so cool about this Mr. Goldson as you do. His book has sent many a victim to a premature grave; and would have sent many more, but for the humanity and zeal of yourself and others who stepped forward to counteract its dreadful tendency.[206]
In the same spirit he wrote to Baron, 6th November, 1810, of Brown of Musselburgh, who had reported certain cases of smallpox after vaccination in a London newspaper—
Some notice must be taken of Mr. Brown’s communication; but if he thinks he shall be able to draw me into controversy, he will be mistaken. His letter, under the veil of candour and liberality, is full of fraud and artifice; for he knows that every insinuation and argument he has advanced, have been refuted by the first medical characters in Edinburgh and Dublin. But the mild, gentle, complaisant antagonist, is a character more difficult to deal with than one who boldly shows his ferocity.[207]
As applied to Brown, sagacious and sincere, this was the very ecstasy of abuse. Even Brown’s adversaries within his own neighbourhood, ultimately yielded to his contention. In the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal of July, 1818, we read—
Before we conclude, we must in justice to ourselves pay the amende honorable to Mr. Brown of Musselburgh, whose opinions we strenuously controverted in 1809; and to which we now, in 1818, confess ourselves partly converts in consequence of increased experience and observation.
In short, calm discussion of vaccination with Jenner was never possible. Inquiry was borne down with clamour, and scepticism denounced as malevolence. “He could not altogether escape,” says Baron, “from the annoyance occasioned by the blindness and wickedness of his traducers”[208]—and all were traducers who were not believers. Indeed, Baron could only account for the perversity of those who did not recognise Jenner as the saviour of mankind from smallpox by a resort to the doctrine of inbred depravity, saying—
We are compelled to believe that there is a principle in our nature which has too strong an affinity for what is untrue to permit the understanding to discern or acknowledge an opposite principle till both the moral and intellectual vision has been purified and strengthened.[209]
Purified and strengthened, and the affinity with falsehood dissolved, it became possible for the understanding to appreciate the virtue of cowpox and the veracity of its advertiser!