Jenner, it may be said, instinctively resented investigation. He was uneasy in conscious duplicity. He knew there was no safety in vaccination as practised; for the cowpox employed was not the horsegrease cowpox he had commended as efficacious. What he had prescribed was disregarded; what he had condemned was approved; but, strange to say, he was praised and rewarded by the world as if cowpox had been his specific! Jenner accepted the situation, and possibly came to believe (after a fashion) that he was enjoying no more than his own; but under the circumstances it was not surprising that he shrank from criticism, kept his early publications out of the way, and resorted to scolding and shrieking whenever scrutiny appeared imminent.
Worse even than his behaviour to investigators and opponents was his treatment of those who converted vaccination to practice. The Inquiry was no handbook, and Pearson, Woodville, and other early vaccinators, had to make their own way, not only unassisted, but with Jenner ready to appropriate their successes and to reproach them with their failures. Baron avers that nothing in the art of vaccination was due to any one but Jenner himself, qualifying this praise with a slight exception in favour of Dr. Bryce of Edinburgh, who made the discovery that if a subject under vaccination is re-vaccinated, the subsequent inoculation is caught up and brought to maturity with the precedent—a phenomenon that as Bryce’s Test was used to ascertain whether true vaccine fever was operative. But even Bryce received scant acknowledgment, and Baron tries to make out that Jenner was possessed of the fact ere it was announced.[210] Jenner’s meanness toward those who displayed any intelligent independence in co-operation with him is written at large in Baron’s biography, but with such innocence that it would be absurd to describe it as indecent. His good faith is perfect, and it is only a critical reader that finds out how he is identified with Jenner, seeing merit nowhere save in his abject servitors and feminine claque.
Vaccinators at this day allow that the influence of vaccination wears out and ought to be renewed; yet Jenner would not listen for a moment to such a modification of its perpetual prophylaxy. Baron writes—
The year 1804, in Jenner’s estimation, formed an era in the history of the Variolæ Vaccinæ. The assertion, that the Cowpox afforded only a temporary security was then insisted on. Had it been correct, it would have deprived the discovery of nearly all its value. This assertion was very easily made; and in the infancy of the practice could not be well disproved. To these circumstances it was owing, that the crude and unsupported statements of Mr. Goldson acquired any influence. Dr. Jenner himself, from the commencement, perceived that in his cases of failure, Cowpox had never been properly taken.[211]
When in 1813 Lord Boringdon introduced his bill to Parliament for the restriction of variolation, Lord Ellenborough observed—
No doubt Vaccination is of some use, but if the noble lord considers it a complete preventive of Smallpox, I differ from him in opinion. At the same time, I have proved my respect for the discovery by having my eight children vaccinated. I believe in the efficacy of Vaccination to a certain extent. It may prevent the disorder for eight or nine years; and in a large city like this with a large family of children, even this limited protection is desirable.
In this declaration the Chief Justice was not singular, but expressed the general conviction of the public who held by vaccination in spite of the manifest failure of the early promises made for it. Nevertheless Jenner was extremely annoyed: it was to him as the formal deliverance of judgment. Baron says—
I have seldom seen Jenner more disturbed than he was by this occurrence; not certainly because he had any fears that the unsupported assertion of his lordship would prove correct, but because it unhappily accorded with popular prejudices, and when uttered by such a person, in such an assembly, was calculated to do unspeakable mischief by unsettling the confidence of numberless anxious parents, and by attempting to deprive Vaccination of more than half its virtue.[212]
Thorough was Baron in his defence of Jenner: no inconsistency appalled him. He records in capitals (as produced) the following as Jenner’s solemn and final testimony, written, a few days before he expired, on the back of a letter, bearing the post-mark, 14th January, 1823—
My opinion of vaccination is precisely as it was when i first promulgated the discovery. It is not in the least strengthened by any event that has happened, for it could gain no strength; it is not in the least weakened, for if the failures you speak of had not happened, the truth of my assertions respecting those coincidences which occasioned them would not have been made out.[213]