A Prospect of Exterminating the Smallpox; being the History of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, or Kine-Pox, commonly called the Cowpox, as it has appeared in England: with an Account of a Series of Inoculations performed for the Kine-Pox in Massachusetts. Printed for the Author at the Cambridge Press by William Hilliard and sold by him and other Booksellers in Boston. 1800.
Kine-Pox! Why Kine-Pox? The reason is stated by the Doctor—
From kine the plural of cow; thus in the Scriptures, “And they took two milch-kine, and shut up their calves at home”; a word equally expressive, and, in the opinion of some, more delicate.
There we have it: More delicate! If it had been bull-pox the objection might have been insuperable. Writing to Jenner, 24th April, 1801, Waterhouse says—
Could you believe that not a single inoculation with Cowpox has yet been effected in Philadelphia? It seems that the leading physician there pronounces it too beastly and indelicate for polished society.[225]
The pamphlet on Kine-Pox set forth the mystery of the new inoculation as received from England with a significant omission—there was not a word in it about Horsegrease! Waterhouse was in correspondence with Pearson, and Pearson may have told him how not only the asserted generation of Cowpox in Horsegrease was discredited, but “how it was like to damn the whole thing”; which might have been true enough, but if true, Where then stood Jenner? He knew that cowpox did not prevent smallpox: the fact was notorious among the medical men in cowpox districts: and he had expressly pledged his faith in the Inquiry to Cowpox begotten from Horsegrease and to nothing else. But Horsegrease Cowpox did not suit the market, and it was withdrawn with Jenner’s tacit assent, and spontaneous Cowpox advanced in its stead, and accepted as Jenner’s veritable discovery. It might be good business to drop the horse out of the case, but what was it else?
Cowpox, testified Waterhouse, was unknown in New England, but he received the revelation concerning it at once—but not, be it repeated, Jenner’s revelation: that he suppressed. He had long suspected that smallpox was communicated from brutes to the human race; and now his suspicion was confirmed. And, such being the origin of variola, it seemed to him not unreasonable that the disease as it existed in a mild form in kine might be used for inoculation with all the advantages pertaining to smallpox, whilst attended with neither injury to the inoculated, nor with risk of infection to those about them—
What makes this newly discovered disease so very curious, and so extremely important is, that every person thus affected, is ever after secured from the ordinary Smallpox, let him be ever so much exposed to the effect of it, or let ever so much ripe Smallpox matter be inserted into the skin by inoculation. In other words, a person who has undergone the local disease and specific fever occasioned by the Cowpox Infection is thereby rendered ever after insusceptible of the Smallpox.
How incautious, to say the least, was the acceptance of this prophecy of perpetual security! With less than three years’ experience an absolute prediction was delivered, received, and repeated over the whole earth as if by parrots. Such, however, is the habit of mankind when possessed by a strong delusion.
In justice to Waterhouse it has to be said that he did not commit himself openly until he had gone through the illusory experiments that were then fashionable in England. He had much difficulty in obtaining a supply of active virus. Several remittances failed, but at last he had one, an inch and a-half of infected thread, from Dr. Haygarth which proved, it was thought, effective.[226] His first patient was his son, Daniel Oliver, aged five; then another child aged three; then a servant lad aged twelve; then a weaned infant of one year—all five successful, whilst two domestics failed “to take”—seven experiments in his own household. Then he had the children taken to the Smallpox Hospital, where they were inoculated by Dr. Aspinwall, and issuing scatheless from the test, the truth was taken as demonstrated, and there was no need for further hesitation. Four gentlemen, including a physician, offered themselves for public encouragement—