I have an attack from a quarter I did not expect, the Edinburgh Review. These people understand literature better than physic. It will do incalculable mischief. I put it down at 100,000 deaths at least. Never was I involved in so many perplexities.
What an extraordinary article! working mischief incalculable, and bad for at least one hundred thousand deaths! A criticism in the Quarterly is said to have killed Keats, upon which Byron remarked—
’Twas strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.
If, however, Jenner was right, it will be allowed, I think, that the murder of a poet was exceeded in atrocity by the slaughter of at least one hundred thousand ordinary mortals. Wherefore, to discover the manner of the great iniquity, I looked up the Edinburgh Review and discovered the diabolical article. It is entitled “Vaccination and Smallpox”; is obviously written by the editor, Jeffrey; and the rock of offence was at once apparent. Doubt is thrown on the efficacy of vaccination to prevent smallpox; ergo, vaccination thus discredited will be neglected; ergo, vaccination thus neglected will enlarge the domain of smallpox; ergo, at least one hundred thousand persons will perish. Q.E.D. But it will be asked, “What did Jeffrey say?” The article thus opens—
Vaccination, we are perfectly persuaded, is a very great blessing to mankind; but not quite so great a blessing, nor so complete a protection, as its early defenders conceived it to be. The proof of this has been admitted with great reluctance; but it has unfortunately become too strong for denial or resistance. The first answers given to the instances of failure, with which the friends of Vaccination were pressed, were, either that the disease which had occurred after Vaccination was Chickenpox, and not Smallpox; or that the process of Vaccination had been unskilfully or imperfectly conducted; or that it was one of those very rare cases which occurred in the times of Inoculation, and from which Vaccination itself did not pretend to be wholly exempt.
The Report of the Vaccine Pock Institution for 1803 is cited, as follows, to show how absolute was the confidence in vaccination in the days of inexperience—
We have been alarmed two or three times with intelligence of Smallpox occurring several weeks or months after our patients had undergone the Cowpox. We thought it our duty to visit and examine these patients, and also to inquire into their history among their attendants, and by these means we obtained the completest satisfaction that the pretended Smallpox was generally the Chickenpox.
As time went on, cases of smallpox after vaccination kept multiplying, and the various excuses to account for their occurrence, though obstinately asserted, utterly broke down. There remained no doubt whatever that to be vaccinated in the most approved fashion afforded no guarantee against smallpox. In 1820, said Jeffrey, the Board of the National Vaccine Establishment was compelled to make the following melancholy admission—