Gardner, I have entrusted a most important matter to you, which I firmly believe will prove of essential benefit to the human race. I know you, and should not wish what I have stated to be brought into conversation; for should anything untoward turn up in my experiments I should be made, particularly by my medical brethren, the subject of ridicule—for I am the mark they all shoot at.[90]
Gardner, Jenner’s friend, who played the part of alter ego in the asseveration of an early date for Vaccination, was a dealer in wines and spirits. Charity believeth all things, but even charity would exhibit a sceptical countenance when what it is a man’s interest to prove and have placed to his credit, is in itself improbable; which, if true, might be proved by documents and witnesses; but which is merely supported by his own word and that of a friend. Let me repeat, there was never a vestige of evidence adduced for the revelations of 1780 beyond the bare assertions of Jenner and Gardner; and further, that they are radically at variance with the tenor and dates of Jenner’s first publication—The Inquiry of 1798.
The next date to which we come is 1787, in which year Jenner is represented as having taken his nephew, George, into a stable to look at a horse with diseased heels—
“There,” said he, pointing to the horse’s heels, “is the source of smallpox. I have much to say on that subject, which I hope in due time to give to the world.”[91]
Baron gives no authority for this anecdote. It is probably ante-dated six or seven years.
In 1788 Jenner married Catherine Kingscote. In his domestic relations, he was devotedly affectionate, even uxorious; ready to defer any duty and to surrender any advantage to the pleasures of home.
As the phrase ran, Jenner was a good hand at a “copy of verses,” and one of these, “Signs of Rain,” commencing—
The hollow winds begin to blow,
The clouds look black, the glass is low—
has a place in nearly all poetical collections.