Dr. Sacco, of Milan, was described as “the apostle of vaccination in Northern Italy,” and “unquestionably the greatest vaccinator in the world.”[256] His operations received the sanction of the Napoleonic administration, and as early as 1801 he was appointed Director of Vaccination to the Cisalpine Republic. “Strong measures,” writes Moore, “were adopted; proclamations were read from every pulpit; vaccination was practised in every church; and the clergy gave such effectual aid, that the Professor and his associates in three years vaccinated 70,000 persons, and extinguished smallpox in Lombardy.”[257] In other words, the vaccination of 70,000 persons extinguished smallpox in a population of several millions! Baron enlarges the numbers, saying that Dr. Sacco and his assistants in the course of eight years vaccinated 1,300,000 persons; and cites a letter from Sacco, dated from Trieste, 5th January, 1808, with the following extraordinary statement—
During eight years I reckon more than 600,000 vaccinated by my own hand, and more than 700,000 by my deputies in the different departments of the kingdom. I assure you, out of a population of 6,000,000 to have vaccinated 1,300,000 is something to boast of; and I flatter myself that in Italy I have been the means of promoting Vaccination in a degree which no other kingdom of the same population has equalled.[258]
Moore’s 70,000 is a credible number, whatever may be thought of its vicarious operation; but Sacco’s 600,000 by his own hand in eight years! Ah, well! when we are lost in the fabulous, it is unnecessary to waste our strength in the discrimination of the greater from the less in falsehood. Nevertheless, taking Sacco’s figures, we have to observe that the vaccination of 1,300,000 saved 6,000,000 from smallpox. That Italy was freed from smallpox is true, and the exemption of the population, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, was prolonged over nearly thirty years. The disappearance of the disease had, however, set in before vaccination was heard of, but the subsidence was claimed for Sacco, although it extended to millions of Italians who owed nothing to the new prophylactic. As already observed, from some cause undefined, the area and intensity of smallpox was signally diminishing toward the close of last century, and this in spite of the stimulus applied to the disease by variolous inoculation. It may have been so stimulated as to have been worked out—forced, as it were, to exhaustion, after the habit of much else, good and bad, when developed to the extremity of existence.
As a grand vaccinator Dr. De Carro, of Vienna, was scarcely less distinguished than Sacco. He was a Swiss from Geneva, who had studied and graduated at Edinburgh, and settled in Vienna. He performed the first vaccination on the Continent, in 1799, with virus conveyed on a couple of threads from Dr. Pearson; and in 1802 he succeeded in transmitting the first effective virus to India. De Carro conducted his operations with great energy and tact, and in 1802 he induced the Austrian Government to issue an ordinance conferring on vaccination Imperial sanction and recommendation. Concurrently with this activity, smallpox was abating, and post hoc was converted into propter hoc. De Carro was credited with the extinction of smallpox in Vienna; but as no more than a portion of the citizens had been vaccinated, Vienna thus supplied another instance of the vicarious influence of the Jennerian rite.
Sacco and De Carro corresponded with Jenner, and it is worth noting that both concurred with him in the opinion that cowpox originated in horsegrease; and, further, that horsegrease was as good against smallpox as horsegrease cowpox itself. Indeed, Sacco set up a stock of virus derived from horsegrease, operated with it, and supplied De Carro, who used it so freely in Vienna that, as he said, he could not tell the vaccinated from the equinated. Writing to Jenner, on 21st June, 1803, De Carro observed—
The means of making your discovery were everywhere; yet nobody before you had the least idea of the singular connection between the Horsegrease, the Cowpox, and the Smallpox.[259]
The favour shown for vaccination by the English Court facilitated its adoption throughout Germany; and yet it might be said the craze went of itself, compelling patronage and exacting advocacy. The King of Prussia opened a Royal Inoculation Institute in Berlin, and tracts and medals, speeches and sermons, were brought into requisition to recommend the new rite. From the furore created, many were led to believe that all Prussia was vaccinated, and as smallpox ceased to prevail, cowpox had the credit. To vaccinate a nation, however, is far from easily accomplished, and when we refer to the official accounts, we discover that, notwithstanding great ado, the numbers operated upon constituted less than a tithe of the people. Jenner cites a report of Professor Avelin, of Berlin, in a letter to Moore, 15th February, 1812, as authority for these statistics—
The anniversary of the invention of the Cowpox Inoculation, or the Jennerian Feast, was celebrated very solemnly at Berlin on 14th May. By public accounts, it appears that there were inoculated in all the Prussian States—