I have invariably found that weakly children have been benefited by the Vaccine Inoculation, and some it has cured of the Hooping Cough.
And this after less than twelve months’ experience!
Waterhouse had also to relate a case of cows having smallpox—
At one of our periodical inoculations, which occur in New England once in eight or nine years,[229] several farmers drove their cows to an hospital near a populous village, that the patients might have the benefit of their milk. The cows were milked by persons in all stages of Smallpox; and in consequence they had an eruptive disorder on their teats and udders that every one in the hospital, as well as the physician who told me, declared was Smallpox. Since Cowpox has been talked of, this account has been revived and credited. Have you found anything like it in England?
Waterhouse had inquiries from Virginia, and wished Jenner to let him have, if possible, a picture of the vaccine vesicle on the negro—
Could I procure two or three coloured plates, delineating the appearances on the skin of the negro, I would send them into such of our Southern States as are blackened by these degraded beings.
“Some in this country, as well as in England,” observed Waterhouse, “having had all their objections to Kine-Pox obviated, persist in asking, ‘Who can tell what may be the consequences in the lapse of years of introducing a bestial humour into the human frame?’ I answer them as does Mr. Ring with a spirit and wit worthy of Franklin, ‘Who can tell what may be the consequences in the lapse of years of introducing milk, beef steaks, or mutton chops, into the human frame?’”
The pertinacity with which this “wit” was employed by the early vaccinators leads us to suppose that they found it effective; but was ever argument by analogy more absurdly misapplied? Milk or steaks from a cow, or chops from a sheep known to be suffering from pox would be rejected with loathing; nor was it ever proposed to cook and eat cowpox; and yet corruption, mere association with which, would render milk, or steaks, or chops loathsome, it was not thought abominable to infuse into the blood!
“The first political and literary characters in our nation are warm advocates of the practice,” said Waterhouse; and it was so. President Adams was quite of a mind with King George in that respect; and Jefferson not only approved of the practice in common with Queen Charlotte, but, as soon as he could obtain virus, set to work with his sons-in-law, and vaccinated their families and neighbours to the number of two hundred. There is a letter from Jefferson to Jenner in 1806, which is remarkable as an absolute confession of faith at a date when much had occurred to shake faith. The President wrote—