Whether he did make use of the word “infallible” is of slight importance. There are various modes in which the same meaning may be conveyed, and Jenner’s was unequivocal. It was in 1801 that appealing to the rigid scrutiny that had taken place in the first professional circles of Europe, he deliberately proclaimed it as certain—
That the human frame, when once it has felt the influence of the genuine Cowpox in the way that has been described, is never afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by the Smallpox.[218]
When Lord Ellenborough in 1813 described vaccination as affording no more than a temporary security from smallpox, he merely expressed the diminished confidence of the community in the practice; but it is the habit of adventurers to ascribe adverse manifestations of public feeling to petty causes; and thus Jenner held that the Chief Justice was indulging a personal grudge when he threw doubt on the perpetual efficacy of his prescription. On one occasion, so ran the story, Ellenborough was relating in a company at St. James’s how Jenner had so little faith in cowpox that he had used smallpox to inoculate his own child, when he was suddenly confronted by an irate personage, who exclaimed, “I am Dr. Jenner, and what you have stated is not true!” whereupon Ellenborough slunk aside in confusion. The fact of the rencontre in the sensational form, we may credit as we please; but about the variolation of Jenner’s child there is no doubt whatever. We have the circumstance recorded by himself with such explanation as he considered adequate.
Turning to the Inquiry, we find under Case XXII. that Robert F. Jenner, aged eleven months, was vaccinated on 12th April, 1798, and that he did not receive the infection. The operation was not repeated, and he remained unvaccinated. Some time afterwards, whilst Jenner was residing at Cheltenham, Mr. Cother, a surgeon, happened to drop in, and having taken the child in his arms, mentioned in the course of conversation, that he had just left a family suffering from smallpox. “Sir,” cried Jenner, “you know not what you are doing! That child is not protected.” What was to be done? “There was no doubt on my mind,” says Jenner, “that the boy was infected;” and having none of the precious horsegrease cowpox in his possession, he held that he was without alternative, and by Mr. Cother the lad was immediately inoculated with smallpox.
The fact in due course got abroad, and, as Baron relates, was made the most of by the opponents of vaccination—
One observed, “Dr. Jenner may say what he likes about Vaccination, but we know for certain that he has inoculated his own son with Smallpox.” Another repeated this statement with the addition, that he had done so because he mistrusted Vaccination. A third added another tint to deepen the colouring, affirming that he knew that Dr. Jenner had abandoned his confidence in Vaccination, and the proof is incontestable, as he has inoculated his own child with Smallpox. These stories passed from mouth to mouth, and afterwards appeared in print with every malignant interpretation.[219]
Such talk was very natural, nor was it without justification. Jenner ought to have proved his sincerity by the vaccination of his son; and he who denounced variolation and variolators with such bitterness might have accepted the risk of infection from Mr. Cother rather than have compromised himself so injuriously. Moreover (as was asked at the time) if the child was infected, what was the use of inoculation? Variolation and vaccination (it was argued) may be serviceable in keeping off smallpox, but are of no avail after infection.
Vaccination has been described as a remarkable survival of superstition in hygiene—many, who disowning all other dodges for the maintenance of health, holding by it. Of course Jenner knew nothing of hygiene in the scientific sense—it was revealed after his time; but it is noteworthy that in none of his publications or letters is there any anticipation of the truth that has proved so fruitful in our experience, namely, that ill-health indicates ill-living, and that the misery of disease is only remediable in so far as we come out of the conditions of disease. Whilst of such truth he knew nothing, he might have known something. It lay plainly before him that smallpox was an affliction of the poor, and of the prosperous in so far as they shared the conditions of the poor, but he never recognised the fact. On the contrary, he cherished the fantasy that various diseases were derived from association with animals; and that thus smallpox originated in cowpox, which in turn came from horsegrease. “There,” said he to his nephew, pointing to a horse with greasy heels, “there is the source of smallpox.”[220] To entertain such an opinion was to be stone-blind to the true causes of disease, and therefore we have no reason for surprise that the Jenner household lived in chronic ill-health, piously submissive to what they supposed the divine will. Typhus fever was recurrent in the household without a suspicion that anything was amiss on the human side. There was a genius named Dawes Worgan, whom Jenner received into his family as tutor to his son, but ere a year had elapsed the poor fellow had two attacks of typhus, and finally succumbed to pulmonary consumption in 1809, in his nineteenth year. Chantry Cottage, Jenner’s residence at Berkeley, was no temple of Hygeia: on the contrary, such a place at this day would be a terror to a respectable neighbourhood, and subject to the attention of the sanitary inspector.
The principle of vaccination conceded—that health may be purchased by disease, it was not surprising that it was thought that measles and scarlet fever could be extirpated by similar treatment. Sir Humphry Davy suggested that hydrophobia might be anticipated by the inoculation of another animal virus, but Jenner held that cowpox should be tried—“nothing like leather.” It was reported from Constantinople that the plague itself was stayed by vaccination, and that experiments, exactly like those used to demonstrate its power against smallpox, had been repeated with complete success. There was not, however, enterprise in the East for the development of the quackery.
Jenner taught that distemper in dogs was preventible by vaccination, and accumulated a variety of “first-rate evidence” in proof. It was no transitory whim. He vaccinated twenty of the King’s staghounds in 1801, and in 1809 contributed a paper to the Medico-Chirurgical Society on the subject, wherein he expressed the opinion that the disease had only existed in England for the past half century. Several great fox hunters had their hounds vaccinated, and the results were pronounced satisfactory.[221] Why, then, was the practice not continued? Why is not distemper exterminated? May we not say the reason is plain? The first-rate evidence was illusory. Men are apt to create the facts they wish for, but as desire subsides, they recover their normal eyesight. Cowpox, we are persuaded, was as good against distemper in dogs as against smallpox in human beings, and but for extraneous causes, it would have been abandoned for the one as for the other.