The Jennerian Inoculation will be deservedly recorded as one of the greatest blessings to the navy of Great Britain that ever was extended to it.
Smallpox was one of the pests of the service. Trotter, writing 20th February, 1801, said—
Within the past seven years there have been more than a hundred instances in which the seamen have been infected; twenty having occurred in the last six months in the Channel fleet alone.
These outbreaks were invariably referred to an origin external to the ship; as if anywhere smallpox could have had a more congenial breeding-place than the crew of a man-of-war! As Dr. Johnson observed, “When you look down from the quarter-deck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human misery; such crowding, such filth, such stench!”[252] Incited by the enthusiastic Trotter, the medical officers of the Fleet subscribed for a gold medal, and presented it to Jenner. On the obverse, Apollo was represented introducing a young seaman recovered from cowpox to Britannia, who, in return, extended a civic crown, on which was inscribed Jenner; above were the words, Alba nautis stella refulsit, and below the date, 1801. On the reverse was an anchor and over it Georgio Tertio Rege, and under it Spencer Duces. The medal was presented to Jenner in February, 1801.
The dates are worth noting afresh. Jenner’s Inquiry was published in the summer of 1798; and thus we see that within three years his prescription for the prevention and extermination of smallpox was adopted in a branch of the public service where obstinate conservatism was the ruling temper; and an assertion that only time could test was accepted without hesitation as verified and certain. If vaccination had answered to the claim made for it, the haste wherewith it was acknowledged would have been unjustifiable, and wholly unlike the struggle that truth has commonly to pass through in order to obtain supremacy in the intellect and practice of mankind.
The first attempts to inoculate with cowpox in France proving futile, Dr. Woodville went over to Paris in 1800 to show in practice the method of operation. He had a warm reception, and the Quaker was overwhelmed with the exuberant attentions to which he was subjected. In the Moniteur he was described as “a learned man, animated with generous zeal, and worthy of gratitude and praise;” who had inoculated six thousand children with invariable success; and that cowpox as a preventive of smallpox could only be spoken of as something miraculous. A house was opened as a vaccine station, and men, women, and children, flocked thither to receive the benign fluid and life-long protection from a dreadful malady.
When the negotiations for the peace of Amiens were in progress, 1802, an address was presented with much pomp to the Marquis Cornwallis by the Medical Committee of the Somme, claiming brotherhood with the physicians of England, eulogising Jenner, denouncing his detractors, stigmatising variolators as acting neither from the love of truth nor for the glory of their profession, but, from avarice and hatred of improvement; whilst, as the result of numerous experiments, “the discovery made in England had been stamped with the seal of infallibility in France.”
At first, vaccination in France was left to voluntary effort, and made little progress in face of a strenuous resistance developed by alarmed variolators; but a severe smallpox epidemic in 1802 incited the Government to action. A medical commission was appointed to investigate and report, and in 1804 it was determined to spare no effort to extend vaccination over the whole of France. A Central Committee for Vaccination was constituted, and appeals and commands were addressed to the clergy and officials of all orders to have those under their authority and influence inoculated with cowpox. Some préfects were content to recommend and warn, but others adopted more vigorous measures, such as the exclusion of the unvaccinated from schools, from employment, from charities—in short, anticipating much legislation that has come into force, or that fanatics wish to bring into force. Nevertheless, the progress made did not satisfy Napoleon, and seeing that until vaccination was everywhere paid for by the State, its performance must remain irregular and perfunctory, a manifesto was issued to the effect that his Majesty the Emperor and King had learned from the reports of the Central Committee that the preservation and increase of his vast dominions were immediately related to systematic and universal vaccination; wherefore, his Majesty, wishing to give a signal mark of his paternal solicitude for his subjects, had granted to his Excellency the Minister of the Interior, an annual special credit, destined to provide for the expenses necessary for extending the new practice, and for forming centres of issue of vaccine virus in twenty-four of the chief cities of the Empire—these, then, including Brussels, Florence, Parma and Turin. And his Majesty had also, out of his paternal benevolence, provided annual prizes as incentives to emulation in propagating vaccination, so that the scourge of smallpox might be completely banished from his territories.
It would be idle to speculate as to how much serious faith lay within this apparent zeal for vaccination; for, as Professor Seeley observes, “Napoleon seemed to care for no opinion, though he adopted, with studied artificial vehemence, every fashionable opinion in turn.” There might be, I dare say, something piquant to his theatrical genius in opposing his odious contempt for human life to the rigorous enforcement of what was considered a supreme prescription for its preservation. Jenner availed himself of the Emperor’s histrionic instinct in soliciting the release of English travellers detained in France. To one of these occasions we owe the artless anecdote of the arrest of Napoleon’s refusal by the interposition of Josephine, who exclaimed, “Jenner!” The Emperor paused and said, “Jenner! ah, we can deny nothing to that man!” It is sad to relate, the favour was not reciprocated. When Jenner, at the suggestion of Baron Corvisart, appealed to the British Government for similar indulgence to a Frenchman, he had to report that there was no charm in his intervention among his countrymen.
That vaccination should have a welcome in Spain was not surprising, after its reception in Naples. The craze was universal, and diffused through the lowest intelligences. Cowpox was introduced to Madrid with the certificate of France under that of England; and, spite of the distractions of the time, excited much attention. Mr. Allen, secretary to Lord Holland, writing to Jenner from Madrid in 1803, observed—