Here we see, that the number of deaths was greater in the first thirty years by 2075 than in the second thirty years during which Inoculation had acquired some stability, and greater by 8115 than in the last thirty years, during which Inoculation was the established practice of most prudent families.[81] We are therefore unjustly accused. These figures leave no doubt that smallpox is decreasing, and we claim that the decrease is due to our practice.”
The decrease was certain, but I cannot allow that it was due to Inoculation; on the contrary I assume that the decrease would have been greater but for the culture of the disease by the inoculators. The fact is extremely distressing to the more rabid vaccinators, and Dr. Corfield tries to curse it out of existence as “the falsest of falsehoods;” but there it abides. It is hard for those who represent Jenner as the saviour of mankind from smallpox to have it shown that Londoners, at least, were in process of salvation before his intervention; but facts, alas! are cruelly unkind to theorists, sentimentalists, and quacks of all sorts. In the words of Dr. Farr—
Smallpox attained its maximum mortality after Inoculation was introduced. The annual deaths from smallpox from 1760 to 1779 were on an average 2323. In the next twenty years, 1780 to 1799 they declined to 1740. The disease, therefore, began to grow less fatal before Vaccination was discovered; indicating, together with the diminution of fevers, the general improvement of health then taking place.[82]
The decrease of smallpox towards the close of the century, says Dr. Farr, was due to “the general improvement of health then taking place;” but to what was that improvement due? No marked improvement had been effected in the sanitary arrangements of London—why then this change for the better? My answer is, that a great alteration was in progress in the popular diet.
Dr. George Cheyne, in his famous Essay of Health and Long Life, published in 1724, says—
There is no chronical distemper whatsoever more universal, more obstinate, and more fatal in Britain, than the Scurvy taken in its general extent.
And more than fifty years afterwards, in 1783, we have Dr. Buchan bearing similar testimony—
The disease most common to this country is the Scurvy. One finds a dash of it in almost every family, and in some the taint is very deep.
It is scarcely necessary to cite authority for what was so generally known and confessed; but in this question of smallpox and its prevention we have to deal with many who appear to be destitute of any historic sense; who argue as if what Englishmen are to-day, they always were; and who contend that as there was more smallpox in London before Jenner than since Jenner, therefore Jenner must be the cause of the diminution. It is necessary to condescend to such feeble folk.
The cause of the general scorbutic habit of the people was widely recognised by medical men, and Buchan merely repeated their common opinion in saying—