The promise of vaccination, its absolute security and harmlessness, was speedily belied. The vaccinated caught smallpox; they fell sick after the operation; they were afflicted with eruptions and swellings; they died. These mishaps were at first denied—stoutly denied; and when denial was no longer possible, it was attempted to explain them away. The cowpox used could not have been genuine cowpox, but spurious; and for awhile spurious cowpox did yeoman’s service in the way of apology; but by-and-by the excuse began to work more harm than good. Mishaps were so numerous that people became afraid of this omnipresent spurious cowpox, and to ask what it was, and how it could be avoided. How can there be spurious pox? Whoever heard of spurious disease? Milkmen vend spurious milk, grocers spurious sugar, smashers spurious coin; but surely cows are not to be numbered with such malefactors as producers of spurious pox! The thing was absurd on its face, and absurd it proved. When Jenner was under examination by a committee of the College of Physicians in 1806, he was pressed hard for a definition of spurious cowpox, when he “owned up.” He knew nothing of spurious cowpox. The words had been employed, not to describe any irregularity on the part of the cow, but certain irregularities in the action of cowpox on the part of the vaccinated: which was to say that when the vaccinated recovered creditably and did not catch smallpox, the cowpox was genuine; but when the sequences were otherwise, why then it was spurious! Ingenious and convenient, was it not?
HORSE VIRUS VINDICATED.
Reverting to Jenner’s suppression of the origin of cowpox in horsegrease, it may be suggested that he had changed his mind: but he had not changed his mind. As observed, various attempts were made to inoculate cows with horsegrease, and that these attempts were failures; but subsequent attempts were successful. Tanner, a veterinarian, of Rockhampton, Gloucestershire, succeeded to Jenner’s complete satisfaction. Dr. Loy of Whitby dispensed with the cow altogether, and inoculated with horsegrease, or horsepox, producing vesicles identical with those of cowpox. The great success, however, in this line was reserved for Sacco of Milan. From the hand of a coachman poisoned with horsegrease he inoculated nine children, and from the virus thus engendered operated on every side. Writing to Jenner in 1803, Sacco said—“It is now admitted and settled that grease is the cause of vaccine, and we cannot too soon alter the designation to equine.” De Carro of Vienna received this equine from Sacco, and used it so freely and successfully among the Viennese, that, in his own words, it became impossible to say which of the citizens were equinated and which vaccinated.
What did Jenner make of these confirmations? He was adjudged mistaken in asserting that the cowpox good against smallpox was derived from horsegrease. Did he appeal with triumph to the evidence of Sacco, and say, “You thought me wrong, but see, I was right!” Not he. He kept silence. He consented to be treated as in error. He stood by and allowed cowpox to be used in which he had no confidence whatever. Nay more. He consented to be rewarded and honoured as the discoverer of a pox (which he did not discover) in which he was without faith, and had at the outset of his career expressly rejected and condemned. He recognised that it was expedient that the connection between horsegrease and cowpox should be denied. He had his bill to settle with the English people, and it was not for him to make difficulties. When, however, he had obtained all he could expect from public favour, and had got clear of London and the oppression of its savants, why then he resumed the expression of his original opinion; and still further, like Sacco of Milan, he dispensed with the cow, and inoculated straight from the horse. He supplied the National Vaccine Establishment with horse virus; he sent it to Edinburgh; he distributed it among his medical acquaintances; he described it as “the true and genuine life-preserving fluid.” What more need I say? Such was Jenner; such were his tactics; and whoever assumes his defence will assume a task in which he is not to be envied.
WHICH SHALL IT BE?
Jenner died in 1823, and at that date three kinds of virus were in use; first, cowpox from horsegrease or horsepox; second, cowpox; third, horsepox. These of course were subject to inscrutable modification in transmission from arm to arm: it is the distinct sources we have to recognise. A patient intent on vaccination might have said to himself, Which shall it be? Shall I be cowpoxed? or, shall I be horsepoxed? or, shall I be horsepoxed cowpoxed? How such an inquirer would have been answered had he set his perplexity before his medical adviser, I can only conjecture. Probably he would have been rebuked for his intrusion into matters outside his province. The little girl who quenched the scepticism of her comrade with the dictum, “It is so, for ma says so; and if it isn’t so, it is so, if ma says so,” illustrates the manner of rebuff administered to those who pry into professional mysteries. It is for you to pay and for us to think is a formula by no means limited to ecclesiastics.
SMALLPOX COWPOX.
Jenner was pleased to describe cowpox as a mild form of smallpox; but for what reason, outside his pleasure, he did not explain. Nevertheless the suggestion has borne fruit. When virus has fallen short, it has been asked, Why, if cowpox be mild smallpox, should not cows be inoculated with smallpox, and a crop of virus be raised? Various such attempts have been made, in which Mr. Badcock of Brighton has been especially distinguished. Mr. John Simon, writing in 1857, said, “Mr. Badcock, from 1840 to the present time, has again and again derived fresh stocks of vaccine lymph from cows artificially infected by him; having vaccinated with such lymph more than 14,000 persons, and having forwarded supplies of it to more than 400 medical practitioners.” When it is remembered that virus for half a dozen or more vaccinations is taken from a single arm, and that this process of reproduction is repeated every week, some idea may be formed of the extent to which this smallpox cowpox has been diffused over the country.
The original assertion that vaccination conferred life-long immunity from smallpox was unwillingly abandoned under stress of experience, until no respectable practitioner pretended that the rite afforded more than a partial or temporary security. In promotion of smallpox cowpox, however, Jenner’s most extravagant claims were revived. In Mr. Simon’s words, for the recipient of smallpox cowpox, “Neither renewed vaccination, nor inoculation with smallpox, nor the closest contact and co-habitation with smallpox patients, will occasion him to betray any remnant of susceptibility to infection.” Untrue even of variolation, it is unnecessary to controvert such a figment: it suffices to place it on record.
The hypothesis was, that smallpox inoculated on the cow lost somewhat of its virulence; but if so, why should not such cowpox inoculated on man resume its virulence? We are apt to forget that the nature of things is not controlled by our wishes, and that our interest in the conversion of smallpox into cowpox, and its maintenance as cowpox, is no warrant for fulfilment. I may also remark that though smallpox cowpox has entered so largely into currency, there is no evidence to what extent it has displaced the preceding issues of horsegrease cowpox, cowpox and horsepox. So far as we know, they are all existent in the common blood, indistinguishable, the stronger surviving, the weaker dying out: nobody knows, nor can know.