“Take the matter of pustules, which are naturally produced on the teats of Cows, carefully preserve it, and before the breaking out of Smallpox make with a fine instrument a small puncture (like that made by a gnat) in a child’s limb, and introduce into the blood as much of that matter as is measured by a quarter of a ratti. Thus the wise physician renders the child secure from the eruption of the Smallpox.”
The Sanscrit work from which this passage was asserted to be taken was never forthcoming, and by competent authorities was pronounced “nothing more than a well-meant device for the reduction of ignorant prejudices,” the native physician who put the leaves into the hands of Mr. Gillman being included in the fiction. Baron continues—
In order to overcome these native prejudices the late Mr. Ellis, of Madras, who was well versed in Sanscrit literature, actually composed a short poem in that language on Vaccination. The poem was written on old paper, and was said to have been found, that the impression of its antiquity might assist the effect intended to be produced on the minds of the Brahmins while tracing the prevention to their sacred cow.
The late Mr. Anderson, of Madras, adopted the very same expedient, in order to deceive the Hindoos into a belief that Vaccination was an ancient practice of their own. It is scarcely necessary to observe that had any authentic record of such a practice existed these gentlemen would never have resorted to such contrivances to gain their object.[237]
These impostors were not priests, but medical men; not Jesuits, but Protestants; not Levantines, but Englishmen in the service of the Honourable East India Company. To what extent their frauds were operative is not related. They were probably too contemptuous of native acumen. For good and for evil the Hindoo listens to English advice courteously and without contradiction, but persists in his accustomed way of life with the equanimity of indifference. That vaccination was an ancient practice in India came to be repeated in Europe and seriously believed, when, Jenner’s originality being impugned, the truth came out, that old Indian vaccination was a device limited to Indian circumstances, and never designed for Western acceptance.
In Madras vaccination was practised with much energy. Jenner, writing on 7th May, 1808, said, “Wonderful to relate, the numbers vaccinated in that Presidency in the course of last year amount to 243,175.”[238] In Bombay it was claimed that smallpox was extirpated; Dr. Helenus Scott reporting, 5th December, 1806, that “in this island, swarming with mankind, no loss from smallpox has been suffered for several years since the introduction of vaccine inoculation.”[239] It was not pretended that all the inhabitants of Bombay had been vaccinated, or even a considerable portion of them; but the early vaccinators appear to have regarded vaccination as a sort of charm, the possession of which kept off smallpox; that by the vaccination, say, of one-tenth of any population, the unvaccinated nine-tenths were protected. This faith in the vicarious efficacy of vaccination was not expressly avowed, but was implied in the numerous reports of extirpated smallpox in circumstances where no attempt was made, or was indeed possible, to effect universal vaccination.
Confuted and frustrated in England, it was Jenner’s habit to sigh, and turn from his ungrateful country to the vast realms of Europe and Asia and America. Writing to Dunning, on 23rd December, 1804, he observed—
Foreigners hear, with the utmost astonishment, that in some parts of England there are persons who still inoculate for Smallpox. It must, indeed, excite their wonder when they see that disease totally exterminated in some of their largest cities and in wide-extended districts around them.
Mark the words—Smallpox totally exterminated in some of the largest cities in 1804; that was to say, after, at the utmost, five years’ acquaintance with vaccination! A miraculous time—was it not? Jenner went on—