To what can the freedom from the vestiges of so loathsome a disease be attributed, but to the protecting influence of Vaccination? for Variolation has now been disused by all respectable practitioners for some time past.
1837.—The rarity of an example of disfigurement by Smallpox now to be found in the theatres, in churches, or in any large assemblage of the people, affords proof that Vaccination has lost none of its efficacy.
Pock-marked faces are by no means uncommon at this day in London, though their number has diminished through more careful nursing and the use of well-known means for preventing disfigurement; and whoever cares to pursue the inquiry will discover that the majority of the marked have been vaccinated and many re-vaccinated—a proof that it is not the rite which prevents the scars.
The general impression we derive from the reports of the Establishment, 1808-40, is that they proceeded from men who were committed to vaccination, but had no profound faith in its efficacy; who were averse from the admission of its impotence, and ultimately held by it as possibly the best available defence against smallpox. With ample means and opportunities for investigation, they made no discovery, nor achieved any advance in practice, nor apparently conceived that there was either discovery or advance to be made. They accepted smallpox as a mysterious ordinance of Nature, with cowpox for a probable antidote, and there stuck fast, thoughtless and helpless. They did not even observe that smallpox was specially a disease of the young and the poor, nor deduce conclusions therefrom. They had their money, and went through an appropriate routine, and there their action ended.
FOOTNOTES:
[275] History and Practice of Vaccination, p. 223.
[276] History and Practice of Vaccination, p. 226.
[277] Baron’s Life of Jenner, vol. ii., p. 398.