HORSEGREASE AS A SOURCE OF VACCINE.
In order to complete the account of Jenner’s awards and the
adoption of Vaccination by Parliament, I have passed over several
matters of interest and significance, which I shall now proceed to
deal with, commencing with the tactics of our hero in relation to
Horsegrease.
In his _Inquiry_, published in 1798, Jenner set forth Horsegrease
as the origin of that form of Cowpox, which, when inoculated on
the human subject, ensured life-long security from Smallpox.
Many attempts were consequently made to produce pox on the teats
of cows by inoculating them with Horsegrease, but in vain; and
the possibility became discredited. Moreover, the notion of
inoculation with Horsegrease, either immediately or through the
cow, was disliked intensely. It was pronounced repulsive. Why virus
from horses’ heels should be more repulsive than virus from cows’
teats was not explained; but, as we know, there is no accounting
for tastes. Many who eat beef with relish would start with disgust
from horse-flesh. A story is told of a Wesleyan who rebuked a
sister for wearing feathers in her hat, and was sharply referred
to the existence of flowers in her own. “Yes, sister dear,” was
the cogent reply, “but we must draw the line somewhere, and it is
drawn at feathers.” The line was drawn at Horsegrease, and the
origin of Cowpox as asserted by Jenner and his country acquaintance
was conveniently denied. Jenner was not slow to perceive how the
wind of opinion was blowing, and let Horsegrease drop. He said not
a word about it in his petition to Parliament in 1802, nor did he
again advance it as a reason for consideration.
Now, why was this? Was it because he had ceased to believe that
Cowpox originated in Horsegrease? Not at all! Why, then, did he not
vindicate his opinion and confront vulgar prejudice? Simply because
he had the wit to discern, that whilst he might get something out
of the national purse for the Cowpox recipe, he could get nothing
for the Horsegrease one. As Dr. Pearson observed, “The very name
of Horsegrease was like to have wrecked the whole concern”--an
observation that Dr. Mason Good confirms in saying, “The mere idea
of using the matter of grease from the horse’s heel excited from
the first so deep and extensive a disgust that Cowpox Inoculation
had nearly fallen a sacrifice from the supposed union of the two
diseases.”
It is not to be supposed that I am censuring Jenner as a
tradesman.[142] If any of us had two patents for sale, we should
be great fools if we declined to take £30,000 for one without the
other, or suffered one to prejudice the other, or tried to inflict
any doctrine about them upon the purchaser. It is for those who
go to market to adapt themselves to the market, and remember that
sellers were made for buyers, and not buyers for sellers. Since
then the public were ready to pay for Cowpox, whilst they shuddered
at Horsegrease, it was not for Jenner to force Horsegrease upon
them.
Such is mercantile logic; and on its own conditions it is
irrefragable; but it is not the custom to deal with Jenner as a
tradesman, but as a man of science, and to range him with great
discoverers, inventors, and benefactors of mankind; and here it is
that I decidedly demur. What, I ask, did he discover? He did not
discover that Cowpox prevented Smallpox: that was the dairy-maids’
faith. He did not discover that Horsegrease prevented Smallpox:
that was the farriers’ faith. He did not discover that Horsegrease
on milkers’ hands begot pox on cows’ teats: that was the farmers’
belief. He did not discover that inoculated virus could be conveyed
from arm to arm: that was an existing practice. What then did he
discover? He discovered nothing. He did no more than take the
vulgar opinion of his neighbourhood to the London market. He made
a few perfunctory experiments by way of confirmation, advertised
them in a book, and by good or ill luck the notion was caught up,
and worked to practical issues, chiefly by Pearson, who thereby
incurred the full malignity of Jenner’s jealousy.
The distinction between a man of science and a tradesman is this,
that the mind of the one is set on the extraction of truth and
the other on the extraction of profit. The man of science does
not inquire what the public may be pleased to know and pay for,
but he ascertains and defines what is fact, and leaves the public
to adjust themselves thereto as they may find convenient. If they
recognise the truth communicated, it is well for them; if they
dislike or deny the truth, it is ill for them; but well or ill,
the man of science is the disinterested expositor of what he
knows to be true; not unfrequently, when his revelation vitally
affronts popular prejudice, realising the blessing of those who are
persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
What therefore I maintain concerning Jenner is, that the truth (as
we may presume he regarded it) he did not fully reveal; that what
he did reveal, he suffered to be derided and denied; that he was
content to take credit for so much of it as was marketable; whilst
his private conviction about Horsegrease remained unaffected, not
only in theory, but in deliberate practice.
It is for me to establish these assertions.
First, I say, he did not fully reveal what he knew. In 1789 Jenner
inoculated his son, Edward, an infant of 18 months, not with
Cowpox, or with Horsegrease, but with Swinepox; and, according
to the evidence of his own papers, the result was perfectly
satisfactory. The child was subsequently inoculated with Smallpox
on five or six different occasions, and always without effect.
According to the well-known variolous test, he was proof against
Smallpox. In short, there was nothing that Jenner ever adduced
in favour of Cowpox that was not equally valid of Swinepox. And
this Swinepox experiment was made nearly ten years prior to his
advertisement of Cowpox and Horsegrease. Why, I ask, did he keep
back the truth about Swinepox? When Cowpox was scarce, and every
cow-house was explored for virus, why did he not recommend Swinepox
as an alternative? Why, too, did he refrain from the obvious
generalisation, that Cowpox, Horsegrease, Swinepox, and probably
other sorts of pox, generated fevers, during the prevalence of
which inoculation with Smallpox was not apt to take? The answer is
plain, Because he had something to sell rather than something to
teach.
In conformity with this conduct he suffered the origin of Cowpox
in Horsegrease, and the specific virtue of grease to be derided
and denied. “It was fortunate for Dr. Jenner, and the triumph of
his discovery,” wrote Dr. Mason Good, “that a minuter attention
to the subject gave sufficient proof that there was no foundation
for his opinion that Cowpox originated in Horsegrease, nor that
any connection existed between the diseases.”[143] Such was
the convenient medical verdict, which Jenner did not venture
to disturb, though all the while persuaded of its error. There
were failures to inoculate cows with Horsegrease, but Thomas
Tanner, veterinary surgeon, of Rockhampton, Gloucestershire, “had
the merit,” says Dr. Baron, “of proving the truth of Jenner’s
statement.”[144] He succeeded in communicating the disease to
the cow from the heel of the horse, producing on the cow’s teat
a complete vaccine pustule. “From handling the cow’s teats,”
said Tanner, “I became myself infected and had two pustules on
my hand, which brought on inflammation, and made me unwell for
several days. The matter from the cow, and from my own hand, proved
efficacious in infecting both human subjects and cattle.”[145]
Jenner distributed the virus from Tanner, and it operated precisely
like Cowpox. But the proof did not rest with Tanner: others
repeated his experiment with similar issues. Dr. Loy of Whitby
published in 1801 _Some Observations on the Origin of the Cowpox_,
in which he confirmed Jenner’s country tales, and described how
(dispensing with the cow) he managed to inoculate patients with
Horsegrease, producing pustules identical with those from Cowpox,
and subjecting the persons thus equinated to the variolous test
with complete impunity. Yet, with so much to fortify him, Jenner
kept silent. He preferred to be adjudged mistaken rather than risk
the forfeit of public favour and pay. Nor might I blame him, had he
frankly reasserted the integrity of the Gloucestershire faith, and
allowed that since the public were ready to accept Cowpox without
Horsegrease, it was not for him to stand in the way of their
preference by an obstinate defence of what was non-essential in
practice.
But the case for Horsegrease was yet stronger than I have stated.
Dr. Sacco of Milan was sometimes described as “the prince of
vaccinators” by reason of his enthusiasm, his professional
attainments, and the facilities that were accorded to him in
the Cisalpine Republic of those days for universal vaccination.
He tried to generate pox on the cow with grease from the horse,
but failed, and in 1801 reported to Jenner his failure. In 1803,
however, he cried, Eureka! A coachman presented himself at the
Milan Hospital suffering from an eruption contracted in grooming
a horse with greasy heels. He was at once led off by Sacco to the
Foundling Asylum, where nine children were inoculated from the
vesicles on his hands. On three of the children the inoculation
took, producing vesicles which were pronounced to be the same as
those resulting from Cowpox. The virus was propagated from arm to
arm, and distributed in all directions. Dr. Sacco from thenceforth
avowed himself a Horsegreaser. “It is now admitted and settled,” he
wrote to Jenner from Milan, 25th March, 1803, “that grease is the
cause of vaccine, and we cannot too soon alter the designation to
equine.”
Was the designation changed to equine? It was not, nor was the
attempt made. Those chiefly concerned in promoting vaccination in
England would not hear of Horsegrease, and many were ready to swear
that in the matter of pox, the horse and the cow had no connection
whatever, and that Jenner had too hastily assumed the truth of a
vulgar west country opinion.
Dr. De Carro of Vienna, who described himself as Jenner’s friend
and first apostle, having effected the first vaccination on the
Continent and transmitted the first charge of vaccine to India,
was also a Horsegreaser. Whilst Jenner was judiciously holding
his tongue about Horsegrease in England, he wrote to De Carro
congratulating him on his success in conveying Cowpox to the
East, and ascribing the failure of the English attempts to the
absurd prejudice against Horsegrease, which Dr. Loy had, however,
completely annihilated. Here are his words under date, 28th March,
1803--
I am confident that had not the opponents of my ideas of the
origin of the disease been so absurdly clamorous, particularly
the _par nobile fratrum_ [Pearson and Woodville], the Asiatics
would long since have enjoyed the blessings of Vaccination, and
many a victim been rescued from an untimely grave. The decisive
experiments of Dr. Loy have silenced the tongues of these
gentlemen for ever.[146]
How the clamorous opposition to Horsegrease had deprived Hindoos
of the earlier blessing of vaccination, we are left to conjecture.
Perhaps he meant that Horsegrease would have borne transit to India
better than Cowpox, or that the Hindoos themselves might have
resorted to horses with greasy heels.
In reply, 22nd April, 1803, De Carro wrote to Jenner commending his
moderation in maintaining silence toward his antagonists--little
apprehending the motives of that silence. Pearson’s conduct, he
thought, bordered on insanity. “I am extremely glad,” he continued,
“that you have treated it with the contempt it deserves, though I
am happy to see that your friends have exposed his ridiculous and
malevolent designs.”
De Carro was intimate with Sacco of Milan, and from him received
virus derived from Horsegrease, which he used indiscriminately with
Cowpox, until in Vienna it was unknown who were vaccinated and who
equinated.[147]
De Carro was also in correspondence with Dr. La Font, a
French physician, established at Salonica, who was likewise a
Horsegreaser. He discovered that the Macedonian farriers recognised
three sorts of grease in horses, called in general _javart_,
and discriminated as _l’écrouelleux, le phlegmoneux, et la
variolique_.[148] With the variolous grease, La Font inoculated
two boys, and from them other children, reproducing the experience
of Loy of Whitby and Sacco of Milan. De Carro in communicating
La Font’s success to Jenner, 21st June, 1803, observed, “These
particulars, I hope, will silence all those who still doubt the
truth of your doctrine as to the connection of Grease, Cowpox, and
Smallpox”--Jenner holding that Smallpox was a malignant variety of
Cowpox, whilst Cowpox came out of Horsegrease.
Notwithstanding these confirmations and his boast that the
opposition of Pearson and Woodville was silenced for ever, Jenner
suffered judgment to go against him. 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 public, and
it was not for him to make difficulties. A curious evidence of
how thoroughly the unpopular truth was suppressed is furnished
by Dr. Willan’s treatise _On Vaccine Inoculation_, published in
1806. There is not a word or hint in it concerning Horsegrease.
The treatise was the work of a competent physician, who set forth
what was known of vaccination (from the standpoint of belief) with
fulness and clearness, accompanied with an appendix of letters and
reports from Jenner himself, from Pearson and other experts in the
new practice--but as to Horsegrease, the silence was absolute. How
the disagreeable truth was so effectually covered up is more than I
can account for. It was not mentioned in the debates in Parliament,
nor was it referred to in the reports of the Colleges of Physicians
and Surgeons, nor did the opponents of vaccination use it with
the force that might have been expected. One explanation is,
that Jenner’s _Inquiry_ never entered into general circulation,
that no popular edition ever appeared, and that it was chiefly
known at second hand. The leading representatives of vaccination,
moreover, so boldly disowned Horsegrease and Jenner’s authority
in ascribing Cowpox to its parentage, that there was little use
in charging them with it; whilst all the while Jenner offered no
open resistance to those who contemned him for one mistake, but
exhausted the language of adulation on his imputed merit. Thus we
suppose it came to pass that at the end of twenty years Dr. Mason
Good, as the exponent of orthodox medical faith, felt justified in
asserting that there was no foundation for the opinion that Cowpox
originated in Horsegrease, nor that any connection existed between
the diseases, and that it was fortunate for Jenner and the triumph
of his discovery that the fact was so.
Jenner was silenced, but was he convinced? How could he be
convinced? Horsegrease as the origin of Cowpox might be voted
detestable and impossible, but there was the evidence of the
country folk, confirmed by Tanner, Loy, Sacco, De Carro, and La
Font; and though a weak man may be put down, or think it worth
while to be accounted mistaken, yet, in the stillness of his mind,
he knows that facts are facts whatever may be said to the contrary.
When, therefore, Jenner had filled his purse, obtaining all he
could expect from public favour, and was clear of London, and
the oppression of its savants, he reverted to his first opinion
as true--true and untrue, true with a distinction, which I shall
presently define. Writing to James Moore, Director of the National
Vaccine Establishment, from Berkeley, on 23rd July, 1813, he
observed--
You seem not perfectly satisfied that the origin of vaccine
is clearly made out. For my part, I should think that Loy’s
experiments were sufficient to establish it, to say nothing of
Sacco’s and others on the Continent. However, I have now fresh
evidence, partly foreign and partly domestic. The latter comes
from Mr. Melon, a surgeon of repute at Lichfield. He has sent me
some of his equine virus, which I have been using from arm-to-arm
for two months past, without observing the smallest deviation in
the progress and appearance of the pustules from those produced
by the vaccine.[149]
And in a subsequent note of 1st August, he repeated--
DEAR MOORE,--I have been constantly equinating for some months,
and perceive not the smallest difference between the pustules
thus produced and the vaccine. Both are alike, because they come
from the same source.[150]
To Moore again he wrote from Cheltenham, 27th October, 1813--
I am sorry you have not succeeded in infecting a cow. I have told
you before _that the matter which flows from the fissures in the
horse’s heels will do nothing_. [Note the observation placed in
italics.] The virus is contained in vesicles on the edges and the
surrounding skin.
Did I ever inform you of the curious result of vaccinating
carters? From their youth these men have the care of horses
used for ploughing our corn lands; and great numbers have come
to me from the hills to be vaccinated, but the half have proved
insusceptible. On inquiry, many of them have recollected having
sores on their hands and fingers from dressing horses affected
with sore heels, and being so ill as to be disabled from work;
and on several of their hands, I have found the cicatrix as
perfect and characteristically marked as if it had arisen from my
own vaccination.[151]
Then we have a memorandum of Jenner’s, dated 1st April, 1817,
wherein he thus traces the course of the virus--
Rise and progress of the equine matter from the farm of Allen at
Wansell. From a horse to Allen; from Allen to two or three of his
milch cows; from the cows to James Cole, a young man who milked
at the farm; from James Cole to John Powell by inoculation from
a vesicle on the hand of Cole; and to Anne Powell, an infant;
from Powell to Samuel Rudder; from Rudder to Sophia Orpin, and
to Henry Martin; from H. Martin to Elizabeth Martin. All this
went on with perfect regularity for eight months, when the virus
became intermixed with other matter, so that no journal was
kept afterwards. Proof was obtained of the patients being duly
protected[152]--
Which was to say, that they were subsequently inoculated with
Smallpox without effect. Among Jenner’s papers, there were other
entries to the same purpose, thus--
_17th May, 1817._--Took matter from Jane King (equine direct)
for the National Vaccine Establishment. The pustules beautifully
correct.[153]
This equine virus from Jane King was extensively diffused. It was,
we see, sent to London; it was also sent to Edinburgh;[154] and
Dr. Baron says he had supplies of it for use in the Gloucester
Infirmary. Baron relates that in the following year he was able
to return the gift, having obtained virus from the hands of a boy
infected directly from the horse. Here is Jenner’s acknowledgment
of the present, dated 25th April, 1818--
My Dear Baron,--Yesterday H. Shrapnell brought me the equine
virus and your drawing, which conveys so good an idea of the
disease, that no one who has seen it can doubt that the vesicles
contain the true and genuine life-preserving fluid. I have
inserted some of it into a child’s arm; but I shall be vexed if
some of your young men at the Infirmary have not done the same
with the fluid fresh from the boy’s hand.[155]
It is surely unnecessary to adduce further evidence of what was
Jenner’s mature faith and deliberate practice. Further, it is
manifest that to the end of his career he held that pox in the
cow was not only derived from grease in the horse, but that it
was exclusively derived from the horse, and, that apart from the
horse, Cowpox would cease to exist. Owing to the multiplication of
vaccination failures, it began to be conjectured that vaccine might
be worn out by transmission from arm-to-arm, and that a reversion
to the cow might be expedient; and discussing the question in
a letter to Moore, dated 5th March, 1816, Jenner advanced the
objection--
If there were a real necessity for a renovation, I know not what
we should do; for the precautions of the farmers with respect to
their horses have driven the Cowpox from their herds.[156]
Why did not Moore rejoin, Where is the difficulty? Suppose pox
driven from the herds, what conceivable reason was there for
anxiety when the cow had become a demonstrated superfluity?--when,
in Jenner’s own words, “the true and genuine life-preserving
fluid” might be drawn direct from horses’ heels? Except for the
perpetuation of imposture, the cow in the case had ceased to have
any value whatever. But, as so often happens with quacks, their
minds become so saturated with their own humbug that there is
nothing left of common-sense.
Having thus proved my assertions concerning Jenner, it may be
reasonably asked, How was it that some got Cowpox by means of
Horsegrease when others could not? for, it may be argued, that if
Cowpox issued straight and invariably from inoculated Horsegrease,
not even the most resolute prejudice against Horsegrease could have
permanently kept back the truth.
The answer is, that Cowpox never came out of what is commonly known
as Horsegrease. The statement made by Jenner in his _Inquiry_ of
1798 that--
The limpid fluid which issues from the small cracks or fissures
in the inflamed and swollen horse’s heel--
infected cows and begot pox was a blunder, which he explicitly
reversed fifteen years afterwards in his letter to Moore of 27th
October, 1813, already cited--
I am sorry [he wrote] you have not succeeded in infecting a cow.
I have told you before that the matter which flows from the
fissures in the horse’s heel will do nothing. It is contained in
vesicles and the surrounding skin.[157]
Jenner, we have always to remember, was a slovenly investigator,
not apt to take pains, but apt to eke out observation with
invention. His friend, “honest Jack Baron of Gloucester,” who
himself inoculated with horse virus unmodified by the cow, actually
wrote Jenner’s life in two volumes, and not until the work was
ready for the binder did he discover that he was in error in
common with his master in ascribing Cowpox to Horsegrease! Such
was the intellectual muddle in which these prophets of vaccination
operated! In a note stuck at the end of the second volume, we have
the following amazing confession, made, remember, in 1838, fifteen
years after the chief conjurer’s death--
I take this opportunity of expressing my regret that I have
employed the word _Grease_ in alluding to the disease in the
horse. _Variolæ Equinæ_ is the proper designation. It has no
necessary connection with the _Grease_, though the disorders
frequently co-exist. This circumstance at first misled Dr.
Jenner, and it has caused much misapprehension and confusion.[158]
Here we have the secret and desired explanation. It was out of
Horsepox, and not out of Horsegrease, that Cowpox was derived,
and in confounding grease with pox, Jenner mystified himself
and others, and obscured the whole doctrine of vaccination.
The Macedonian farriers who in 1803 informed La Font that they
recognised three sorts of grease, and one of them variolous, were
more accurate observers than the Gloucestershire farriers and
farmers whose opinion Jenner lazily retailed. Whether he had any
clear apprehension of his own blunder is not apparent. We have
seen how long it took his biographer, Baron, to find it out. This
is certain, that he made no public attempt to set right what he
had so egregiously set wrong, nor to withdraw the statement in
his _Inquiry_ that Horsegrease only acquired its efficacy against
Smallpox after inoculation on the cow.
Lastly, we may inquire what is the present state of opinion as to
Horsegrease and Cowpox? When difficult questions are asked, we
usually turn to our cyclopædias, and taking down Hooper’s _Lexicon
Medicum_, 8th ed. 1848, Art. Cowpox, we read--
It is now ascertained that the horse and the cow each furnish,
independently of the other, a virus capable of communicating
genuine Cowpox to the human subject.
Genuine Cowpox communicated by a horse is surely a bull of the
first magnitude! The _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 8th ed. 1860, Art.
Vaccination, illuminates us thus--
It is now to be regarded as an established fact, that Horsegrease
and Cowpox are the same complaint, modified by the constitution
of the animals in which they occur.
An established fact, indeed!--established in quicksand!
Some say the Gloucestershire farmers and Jenner were correct in
attributing Cowpox to Horsegrease, and that they can only he
charged with mistake in nomenclature. When they said Horsegrease,
they meant Horsepox, not discriminating between maladies that
sometimes occurred together. No one now believes that the affection
recognised by veterinarians as “grease” ever originated Cowpox. The
same rural authorities, including Jenner, held that where there was
no Horsepox, there could be no Cowpox; but, so far as I can make
out, that conclusion is surrendered. Pox on the horse may generate
pox on the cow, but the cow may have pox without the horse.
In this respect only was Jenner in error [says Mr. George
Fleming, Army Veterinary Inspector]. The two diseases are
perfectly independent of each other. Cowpox appears where there
are no horses, or possible contact with horses; and may affect a
number of cows in a dairy while the horses are entirely free from
Horsepox.[159]
At this point comes the tug of war. If cows have pox, how do they
contract the malady? Speaking at the London Conference on Animal
Vaccination in December, 1879, Professor J. B. Simonds, Principal
of the Royal Veterinary College, said--
My contention is, that the existence of Cowpox has to be proved.
Jenner’s account of the disease was an illusion. In my experience
among animals for forty years, I have never seen a case of
Cowpox, and I do not believe that any form of variola belongs to
the bovine race. Sheep are afflicted with pox, but not cattle. We
hear of Cowpox, but who ever heard of Bullpox? And is it credible
that a disease should be confined to cows and never attack bulls
and steers? Let any one point out an affection of females that
does not extend to the males of the same species.
Professor Simonds and others believe that Cowpox as described by
Jenner was a parasitic affection of Smallpox, probably communicated
by milkers; and that Ceely, Badcock, and others did intentionally,
what milkers had done inadvertently, when they inoculated cattle
with Smallpox in order to create virus for vaccination. On the
other hand, those who assert the independent existence of Cowpox,
hold no terms with this heresy. As Dr. Cameron says, “We can no
more make Smallpox into Cowpox than by stunting an oak-tree we can
make it a gooseberry bush.” Fortunately I have no call to pronounce
judgment on the controversy. The more it rages, the better I
like it, and if the combatants disposed of each other as did the
Kilkenny cats, I might not be very sorry.
A last word as to Horsepox. There seems to be little doubt that
when inoculated on man it gives rise to vesicles indistinguishable
from those raised by Cowpox. In 1863 Professor Bouley of Alfort
produced pox on a cow by inoculating it with pox from a horse,
and children were successfully vaccinated with the virus. In the
Transactions of the Clinical Society, Vol. X., Mr. John Langton,
describes the case of a groom who came to St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital, 20th March, 1877, with an eruption caught from a horse
exactly like that induced by vaccination; and there could be no
question, says Mr. Langton, that the disease was the same as that
described by Jenner as grease.
There is much virus in currency as vaccine that is equine, and many
of us are equinated who suppose ourselves vaccinated; and it might
be argued that we have been saved from Smallpox by reason of our
equination. Why with all the notorious failures of vaccination, and
of re-vaccination, some of the more audacious medical quacks do not
recommend Horsepox as an infallible alternative, is not easy to
understand. It would be a Napoleonic stroke; nor is it improbable
that before vaccination is surrendered the attempt will be made.
How easily it might be asserted that vaccination is a failure in
so far as it has lost the original virtue of equination, that the
remedy is to dismiss the cow and revert to the horse, from whose
poxy heels, as the immortal Jenner observed, there issues “the true
and genuine life-preserving fluid.” The oracle might be worked
thus--
“Let us hear no more of pure lymph from the calf, too often, alas!
an illusion. Sure and certain salvation from Smallpox can only
be guaranteed to those inoculated with pure pox from the horse.
Come then to the horse, the horse with pox! Come quickly! Come
yourselves! Come with your wives! Come with your children! Come and
be saved by Horsepox from the loathsome pestilence that decimates
the human race and brings myriads to untimely graves!”
FOOTNOTES:
[142] As tradesman, however, Jenner was not honest. He took to
market what was not his to sell. The introduction of Cowpox for
inoculation (stigmatised in _The Inquiry_ as spurious, not being
derived from Horsegrease) was effected by Pearson, and Jenner’s
claim to it was an act of piracy.
[143] _Study of Medicine_, vol. iii. p. 59.
[144] _Life of Jenner_, vol. i. p. 248.
[145] _Treatise on the Cowpox._ By John Ring. P. 336.
[146] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. i. p. 428.
[147] Copeland’s _Medical Dictionary_.--Art. Vaccination.
[148] _Histoire de la Vaccination._ Par Jean de Carro. Vienne, 1804.
[149] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. ii. p. 388.
[150] _Ib._ p. 388.
[151] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. ii. p. 390.
[152] _Ib._ p. 226.
[153] _Ib._ p. 226.
[154] _Account of Varioloid Epidemic in Edinburgh._ By John
Thomson. London, 1830.
[155] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. ii. p. 227.
[156] _Ib._, p. 399.
[157] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. ii. p. 390.
[158] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. ii. p. 456.
[159] _Lancet_, 29th May, 1880, p. 834.