It has been made matter of almost familiar experiment that the infection of Smallpox may, by inoculation, be communicated from Man to Cow; that its result is an eruption of vesicles presenting the physical characters of Cowpox; that the lymph from these vesicles, if implanted in the skin of the human subject, produces the ordinary local phenomena of Vaccination; that the person so vaccinated diffuses no atmospheric infection; that the lymph generated by him may be transferred, with reproductive powers, to other unprotected persons; and that, on the conclusion of this artificial disorder, neither renewed Vaccination, nor inoculation with Smallpox, nor the closest contact and cohabitation with smallpox patients, will occasion him to betray any remnant of susceptibility to infection. (P. xiv.)
Thus were the discredited claims of Jenner revived and reasserted for a new variety of virus—for smallpox inoculated on the cow! Even revaccination was pronounced impossible, and logically; for revaccination implies susceptibility to infection. It was idle, however, to shelter this new development under Jenner’s authority. When Jenner said that cowpox was smallpox in milder form, he meant in process the reverse of Simon’s interpretation. He meant that smallpox came to man from the horse through the cow; and not that the cow contracted smallpox from man. Showing his nephew a horse with greasy heels, he said, “There is the source of smallpox.”[289] When the stock of cowpox for vaccination ran low, Jenner feared it might be difficult to enlarge the supply. Why? Because farmers exercised such precaution, since they learnt that cowpox was derived from horsegrease, that the disease among cows had become well nigh extinct. Possibly Jenner was mistaken: possibly cowpox originated in smallpox: but what Simon described as “settled” in 1857 exists to this day in vehement dispute. Simon’s prescription was practically a fresh discovery—a new departure in vaccination. It recalls the practice of the variolators who took virus for timid patients from healthy subjects inoculated with mild smallpox; the supposition being that the virulence of the mild pox was meliorated in them, they playing the part that Ceely and Badcock assigned to the cow. Thus when Dimsdale variolated the Empress Catharine, it was with smallpox mitigated in the person of a strong young man. Had Dimsdale substituted a cow for a man, he would not only have anticipated Jenner, but the later revelation and practice of Ceely and Badcock—“the greatest physical good ever given by science to the world.”
Simon next went on to describe “Smallpox since the Use of Vaccination,” concerning which these observations may suffice—
1st—Smallpox was abating over Europe prior to the introduction of vaccination, notwithstanding the stimulation of the disease by variolation.
2nd—The discredit cast upon variolation by vaccination threw smallpox out of culture, and to that extent abated smallpox.
3rd—It was absurd to ascribe the decline of smallpox to vaccination in countries where only a part of the people were vaccinated; and usually, as in England, a part least liable to smallpox.
These considerations, sufficiently developed in preceding chapters, nullify the conclusion, supported by elaborate statistical tables, that vaccination was the cause of the decline in smallpox. The asserted cause was incommensurate with the effect.
Another remark remains, namely, that all vaccination was taken by Simon for effective vaccination, except where smallpox followed, and then suspicion was thrown on the virus or the time and mode of its administration. But under his own definition of virus, namely, smallpox inoculated on the cow, the greater part, if not the whole, of the vaccinations accomplished were with virus altogether diverse—with cowpox that owed nothing to smallpox, with equine cowpox, with horsepox, and much else known only to omniscience. Yet it was to these heterogeneous inoculations, modified inscrutably in transit from patient to patient, that the subsidence of smallpox was attributed! In a word, whatever was anywhere or by anybody called vaccination, served, according to Simon, to exterminate smallpox. Where shall we find an epithet for such crass assurance, with neither science or common-sense to lend it the gloss of probability!
The succeeding chapter, “Alleged Drawbacks from the Advantages of Vaccination, and alleged Dangers of its Practice,” was as abusive as unfair. It is admitted that much nonsense has been written against vaccination, and, if the pot may call the kettle black, much more nonsense has been circulated in its favour. Vaccination was recommended for the improvement of health and the complexion, for the cure of skin diseases, for the Plague, for whooping-cough, for rot in sheep, and for distemper in dogs—Jenner himself vaccinating the King’s staghounds. But to what purpose such recrimination? The prime charge against vaccination is, that it is a disease which neither averts or mitigates smallpox; and the second is, that it frequently excites and sometimes conveys other diseases.
Simon waxed eloquent on the absurdity of referring the origin of certain scrofulous affections to vaccination, whilst describing such affections as notorious sequences of smallpox; but where was the absurdity if vaccination was (as he held) a mild form of smallpox?—the mild disease serving equally as a ferment or excitant of evil humours. In his furious contempt he forgot his science and logic, and implicitly conceded all for which rational adversaries of vaccination contended.