1840.—The experience of another year has afforded proofs of the propriety, in the present state of our knowledge, of preferring Vaccine Matter, the produce of the original virus furnished by Dr. Jenner, which has now passed happily through successive generations of subjects in the course of 43 years, and which forms the principal source of our supply, to any which may have been recently taken from the cow.
Here we have “the original virus furnished by Dr. Jenner” set forth as no more than “the principal source of supply.” The reports are characterised by many similar inconsistencies—
1845.—We regard as erroneous the belief that Vaccine Virus undergoes deterioration by being kept; in proof of which we are prepared to establish, by unquestionable documents, the striking fact, that Lymph which had been conveyed to and from India has retained its protective properties wholly unimpaired after a lapse of 20 years.
Another vexation of the Board was due to the assertion that the protective virtues of vaccination gradually wore out, and that the repetition of the rite was necessary for the maintenance of salvation. In the London Medical Gazette, 2nd August, 1844, it was proclaimed—
We are sorry to announce the extensive prevalence of Smallpox at this time among us. Revaccinate, Revaccinate, say we.
Such advice was essentially heretical and damnable; for Jenner affirmed and maintained—
That the human frame, when once it has felt the influence of the genuine Cowpox, is never afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by Smallpox.
If revaccination were possible, smallpox after vaccination was possible; and if so much were conceded, on what ground was vaccination to be defended? Whatever the facts, the members of the Board resolved to stand loyally by the primitive Jennerian doctrine, and in their Report for 1851 thus testified—
It may be expedient to remind the public of the established fact which the Board upon former occasions anxiously insisted upon, that the restriction of the protective power of Vaccination to any age, or to any term of years, is an hypothesis contradicted by experience, and wholly unsupported by analogy.
Notwithstanding the prohibition of Variolous Inoculation, the Board had repeatedly to deplore its continuance especially in Ireland. Thus we read—