DR. JOHN WALKER.
Jenner’s references to the good effects of vaccination in London
were curiously inconsistent. That vaccination in which he professed
to rejoice was chiefly the work of Dr. John Walker, whose practice
he had denounced as so widely at variance with what he considered
correct, that even the wreck of the Royal Jennerian Society was not
thought too heavy a price to pay for deliverance from complicity
with him. The London Vaccine Institution, established in 1806 by
Walker and his friends, was responsible for the large majority
of vaccinations effected in the metropolis. Walker was a pure
enthusiast, of boundless energy, with a craze for vaccinating.
Adverse results had no effect upon him: he did not deny, but simply
did not recognise them, and held on prophesying and practising with
mechanical persistency. Nevertheless, he ran aground. The income of
the Institution had dwindled to less than £100 a year when Andrew
Johnstone, a Cumberland man, a school-fellow of Walker, came to
his assistance. With a commercial eye he surveyed the situation.
He perceived that though vaccination had fallen into disrepute,
there remained many believers who only required stirring up and
solicitation to provide funds to keep Walker going and to yield
the collector a satisfactory commission. As the Royal Jennerian
Society had ceased to exist for any active purpose in 1810, nothing
remaining “but a Patronage, a Presidency, and an unorganised body
of Subscribers and Governors,” it occurred to him that it would be
good policy to annex these to the revived enterprise, and in due
course a union was effected, and the LONDON VACCINE INSTITUTION
AND ROYAL JENNERIAN SOCIETY became the title to conjure with. An
attempt was made to secure Jenner for President, but that was too
bold a stroke. He thus answered the application--
CHELTENHAM, _3rd September, 1813_.
Although it must be evident that every institution which has for
its object the extension of Vaccine Inoculation, must have my
best wishes for its success, yet, for reasons which on reflection
must be obvious, you must see the impossibility of my accepting
the offered appointment.
Highly impressive were the Reports of the reconstituted Institution
under the patronage of the Corporation of the City of London with
the City Arms on the covers. Subsequently the King, George IV.,
appeared as patron, and the City Arms gave place to the Royal Arms.
Among the presidents were the Archbishop of Canterbury, four or
five Dukes (one of them Wellington), half a dozen Marquises and as
many Bishops, about a score of Earls, with M.P.’s and pious and
philanthropic notables many. So much was due to the tact of Andrew
Johnstone, who understood the use of names, who never dropped one
of the least influence, and, spite of Jenner’s ill-will, dealt
with his honours and countenance as though they belonged to the
Institution. Business is business, he would have said, and holds
no reckoning with pique and dislike. Nevertheless the financial
results did not correspond with the overpowering patronage. The
income of the Institution never attained £1000 a year, whilst the
bills for advertising and printing sometimes approached £500. In
the Report for 1827 we find the operations thus summarised--
Vaccinated during 1826 by Dr. Walker, 4,217
From the beginning, 1803, 65,750
By appointed Inoculators in London and environs
in 1826, 16,999
From the beginning, 237,119
By appointed Inoculators in the country in 1826, 21,261
From the beginning, 548,430
The income of the Institution in 1826 was £620 15s., and the
expenditure £715 12s., leaving a deficit of £94 17s.
The figures are interesting, for they afford some idea of the
extent of London vaccination during a quarter of a century. The
operations of the Vaccine Institution lay chiefly among the
poor--the vast majority in London as in every city; and if we
allow that in the course of five-and-twenty years, 350,000, in
a population of upwards of 1,000,000 in the flux of life and
death, were operated on, we give a liberal estimate in favour
of vaccination. That even so many could have much effect on the
prevalence of smallpox (except for aggravation) is incredible,
unless the vicarious action of vaccination be seriously asserted.
Turning over Walker’s report it is amusing to observe how any
abatement in London smallpox was attributed to vaccination, and any
increase to its neglect--an ingenuous exemplification of the fable
of the Fly and the Wheel.
The appointed inoculators of the Institution were a numerous
body--250 names and addresses are given in one of the Reports. They
were chiefly London tradesmen with a taste for doing what they
thought “good.” As vaccination came to be regarded as professional
work, these “unqualified practitioners” gave cause for offence,
but Walker held stoutly to his opinion, which he shared with
Jenner, that vaccination might be performed by any man or woman.
In Walker’s words, “It is easier to perform the whole business of
vaccination than it is to thread a needle--yea, it is easier.”
The annexation of the remains of the Royal Jennerian Society by
Walker was much disliked by Jenner and his associates; and when
the revived enterprise showed signs of prosperity, their dislike
developed to open enmity, and John Ring’s services as bravo and
satirist were called into requisition. He first tried his hand,
anonymously, in a volume of doggerel, published in 1815, entitled
_The Vaccine Scourge_,[185] in which Walker is represented as
singing--
I am a jolly beggar,
From Cockermouth I came;
I do pretend to be a Friend,
John Walker is my name;
And a-begging we will go, will go, will go,
And a-begging we will go.
The verses, extending over a hundred pages, are wretched stuff,
vulgar and malevolent, and a few extracts from the Preface will
indicate the animus of the entire performance. Ring’s assumption
was, first, that Walker was a rogue from whom the public required
to be protected; second, that his Institution was superfluous; and
third, that if greater facilities for vaccination were wanted in
London, it should be left to the Government to provide them--
These hints may serve to warn the public. Dr. Walker is an
artful, avaricious, and ambitious man; but let him be cautious
how he acts when he tries to exercise his art, to glut his
avarice, and to gratify his ambition. Let him recollect what was
inscribed on the tombstone of an infamous scoundrel--
“Lie still if you’re wise;
You’ll be damned if you rise.”
We recommend him and his accomplices not to try to obtain
money by false pretences. A Vaccine Institution has long been
established by the Legislature, where, as well as at other
Institutions, matter may be procured free of expense; and no one
who has much zeal in the cause of Vaccination will find much
difficulty in procuring it. If farther aid is necessary, let it
be granted by Parliament, and not to a set of swindlers. It is
not meet to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.
Many of the agents of the London Vaccine Institution were chemists
and apothecaries, and these, according to Ring, had an interest in
the propagation of smallpox--
To exterminate Smallpox by means of chemists and apothecaries,
the greatest friends of Smallpox, is to cast out devils by
Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. You might as well expect
a foxhunter to destroy the breed of foxes, or a ratcatcher to
exterminate the race of rats.
The _Vaccine Scourge_ producing little effect, Ring returned to
the charge in the following year, 1816, with _A Caution against
Vaccine Swindlers and Imposters_.[186] The _Caution_ is a series
of libels, the puerility and extravagance of which were their own
nullification. A motto was taken from the _New Monthly Magazine_
for the title-page, as follows--
The Jennerian discovery has shed a brilliant lustre on our era;
but unfortunately, the discovery has been in a great degree
rendered abortive by _bastard institutions_, created for the
purpose of filling the pockets of _a set of adventurers, without
education_, and _destitute of principle_. We could name several
wretches who have fattened, and are still fattening, on such jobs.
Ring delivered his mind unequivocally. Walker was an imposter, and
the London Vaccine Institution prospered by his frauds--
There is a Society in this Metropolis [he wrote], falsely calling
itself the Royal Jennerian Society, which has been collecting
subscriptions to a considerable amount under that assumed name;
and thus collecting money under false pretences.
An eminent physician speaking of this Society and its successful
state, called it a successful villany; and villany is not the
less villany because it is successful.
It has also been organising a complete system of quackery, by
granting diplomas to persons totally ignorant of the first
principles of the medical profession, which will add to the
present host of empirics.
No one can now pass along the streets without being annoyed with
the inscription, VACCINATION GRATIS UNDER THE SANCTION OF THE
LONDON VACCINE INSTITUTION in one pane of glass, MACASSAR OIL in
a second, and PATENT BLACKING in a third. In short Vaccination is
now _quite a drug_.
These were words of envy and malice, and came with odious
inconsistency from the spokesman of Jenner, who had instructed
and encouraged his acquaintances, male and female, to practise
vaccination. We may, however, take Ring’s evidence as to Walker’s
activity in London--
Dr. Walker glories in his chemical, galenical, pharmaceutical,
and dentrifical inoculators; and boasts that they exceed in
number those of any other vaccine institution; but he glories in
his shame. _Non numerentur, sed ponderentur._ They are springing
up under every pestle and mortar, and barber’s pole, like
mushrooms in a hot-bed, from Hyde-Park Corner to Whitechapel, and
from Whitechapel to Blackwall. It is the duty of every regular
practitioner to expose such imposters, and to encourage such
exposure. It is, in fact, the rescuing of life from fraudulent
and rapacious hands.
One of his inoculators is Mr. Campbell, who cures all sorts of
incurable diseases with _Elephants’ Milk_. He says he recently
sent 20,000 bottles to Russia at 11s. each. He also sells the
Milk in pills at 2s. 9d. a box. The poor have the Milk at
half-price; and strict secresy is preserved.
In Walker’s Plan for 1814, it appears that he grants his diplomas
to those who _are not_, as well as to those who _are_, of the
medical profession, and that Inoculators in the country are
requested and _authorised_ to put up a board with the following
inscription, PROTECTION FROM SMALLPOX UNDER THE SANCTION OF
THE LONDON VACCINE INSTITUTION. Then is to follow the name
of the farrier, cobbler, barber, barber-surgeon, apothecary,
man-midwife, tooth-drawer, druggist, chemist, oil-man,
cheesemonger, drysalter, or grocer, who dispenses the blessing of
Vaccination gratuitously.
The motley crew thus appointed are directed to make an Annual
Return of the numbers inoculated by them in order to swell Dr.
Walker’s list; and such inoculators are not in general very nice
in their calculations. Many of them will, in all probability,
like other quacks, pretend to a hundred times more than they
really perform.
Those who continued to believe that Vaccination was an easy and
harmless operation, could see nothing but good management in the
multiplication of Walker’s agencies, nor anything but meanness
in Ring’s sneers at tradesmen. His assertion that the use of
the title of the Royal Jennerian Society was fraudulent, had no
justification, yet it was his persistent reproach--
Honesty is the best policy. I therefore sincerely advise Dr.
Walker and his Board, to assume no more the title of the Royal
Jennerian Society, to which they must know they have not the
least claim, lest they should be brought before the Lord Mayor
as swindlers, and be prosecuted for obtaining money under false
pretences. I am informed that they have already been compelled
to refund a legacy of £100; and it is to be hoped they will be
compelled to refund the rest of their ill-gotten store.
Lastly, he appealed to the members of the Jennerian Society,
demanding--
How long will they suffer their names to be prostituted, and the
public to be deluded by a set of swindlers and imposters; by
men who are neither dignified by their rank, nor distinguished
by their talents; by a set of daring adventurers and despicable
upstarts! It is a gross insult and indignity, to which no man of
the least sense of honour, or of shame, would submit.
But they did submit, and why not? Enthusiasm for Vaccination had
passed away. It had been found out; it was everywhere distrusted;
and those who held by it had to see it pushed on the same terms as
any other quack prescription. What then was there to object to in
Walker s procedure? The reason for Ring’s libels lay in Jenner’s
jealousy. Walker was Jenner’s abhorrence. He had joined in the
conspiracy to oust Walker from the Jennerian Society in 1806, but
the operation proved fatal to the Society, whilst Walker conveyed
the confidence and subscriptions of the faithful to his new
Institution. What wonder, then, that Jenner disliked the eccentric
Quaker! Even worse; Walker accurately appraised Jenner’s share in
“the vaccine discovery,” which came, he said, from Jenner as a
hint, and was developed by Pearson and Woodville in practice--a
fact that was as gall and wormwood to Jenner. Moreover, Walker
had written a Jenneric Opera in which Jenner was represented as a
country apothecary riding up to London on a cow, and going round
a-begging among the nobility and gentry. Wherefore says Ring--
As to the calumny and detraction which Dr. Jenner and his friends
have received at the hands of that desperate adventurer in his
Jenneric Opera and elsewhere, they are content to bear it,
provided he will not again use the language of flattery toward
them; nor lavish his encomiums on them in that polluted channel,
the Medical Journal. His resentment can do very little harm,
which is more than can be said of his adulation.
“It is the slaver kills, and not the bite!”
Ring was an awkward champion. He sneered at Walker’s diplomas
certifying fitness to act as vaccinator--
They will have the same authority [he said] and the same virtue
as a diploma from the University of St. Andrews; and in all
probability will in a short time be sold at the same price--
Forgetful that it was from St. Andrews that Jenner purchased his
M.D.!
With equal recklessness, he denounced Walker as a vaccinator,
saying--
He tells the public in his Address that “Vaccination will shed
consolation into the bosom of every family;” but alas! I have
known many a family that has had reason to rue the day in which
they believed him, when he told them this flattering tale....
It is very necessary that his followers pray that the Lord have
mercy on them, if they have no other director than Dr. Walker.
Concerning the consequences of Walker’s operations, Ring, no
doubt, testified truly. Many continue to rue the day when they
listen to the flattering tale of the vaccinator. But the testimony
came strangely from a Jennerite, who was ready to swear that
any abatement of smallpox in London was due to the vaccinations
effected in great part by “that desperate adventurer,” Walker!
Ring was implacable, the more so, perhaps, as Walker and his
friends were apparently indifferent to his abuse. He burst forth
afresh in the _London Medical Repository_ for 1821, where among
much else we find the following--
HANOVER STREET, _11th October, 1821_.
The mock Royal Jennerian Society is extending its impositions and
depredations. The emissaries of this bastard institution, as well
as the principals, should suffer transportation if there be any
public spirit among us.
I beg leave to add that the present Society is disclaimed by Dr.
Jenner, who cautioned the Emperor of Russia against it when his
Majesty was in London in 1814.
In my _Caution against Vaccine Swindlers and Imposters_,
published in 1816, I related several instances of the ill effects
of Dr. Walker’s practice, and some in which it had proved
fatal. It was partly for his mal-practice, and partly for his
mis-conduct, that he was about to be expelled from the Royal
Jennerian Society; and, after his artful and wicked stratagems,
was permitted to resign; yet now he has the arrogance to call
himself Director of that Society, and to issue his venal diplomas
in its name. If Dr. Walker must imitate the universities of St.
Andrews and Aberdeen, let him at least have like them _some_
certificate of qualification. If he is determined _to grow rich
by degrees_, let him also endeavour to grow wise and honest.
The diplomas which thus moved Ring’s wrath were imposing documents,
certifying that the holder was authorised to vaccinate, intended to
be framed and exhibited in the shop or parlour. There was a picture
of something like an arch of Waterloo Bridge with London in the
background and the Royal Arms overhead; Jenner standing on a pier
with a dead serpent hanging in limp folds over his arm, with the
inscription, _Per omnia littora vincitur variola_; a woman milking
a cow with a group of children around her, drinking milk out of
porringers, as if milk were cowpox; whilst the bed of the Thames
was blocked with the names of the great and good who had testified
in favour of vaccination--an allegorical style of representation
then much in vogue and considered impressive.
In order to create prejudice, Ring had much to say of Walker’s
religious and political principles. He was a Quaker of the Thomas
Paine pattern, and like Paine had associated with the French
revolutionists; but whilst dressing as a Friend, and associating
with Friends, he was too unconformable a personality for their
Society, and was never received into membership. Ring’s imputations
of rapacity and avarice were grossly absurd as applied to Walker.
He cared for nothing beyond support in his work as vaccinator. It
was said he would take a £5 note, fold it, stick a pin through
it, write an address on the back, and post it. He would rarely
vaccinate the well-to-do. If they came to his office, he would
ask, “Who is thy medical attendant?” and wrapping up some fresh
matter on glasses would say, “Take this with my compliments to
thy medical attendant, and he will do what is requisite quite as
well as myself.” When he did call at a house to vaccinate, he
never asked for a fee, and his biographer, Dr. Epps,[187] observes
that he was only known on one occasion to express a wish for
remuneration. Meeting a merchant in St. Paul’s Churchyard, whose
household he had vaccinated at some inconvenience, he observed,
“Friend, if thou has sent by thy servant a draft for my services to
thy family, he has either robbed me or deceived thee.” When money
was brought to him, he usually called his wife to receive it, she
having the undivided care of all that pertained to him apart from
vaccination. Of this good woman, Annie, he was in the habit of
speaking with an admiration and unreserve that constituted one of
his numerous oddities. For example, when Dr. Moore in his _History
of Vaccination_ observed somewhat maliciously--
John Walker, it is said, procured a medical diploma from the
indulgent University of Leyden; and more excellent work than
Walker’s has rarely been performed by a humbler instrument--
Walker good-humouredly replied, that Moore as a Glasgow man
naturally preferred his own University to that of Leyden, but he
too had cause to love Glasgow--
“Glasgow is a bonnie town, and there are bonnie lasses in it.”
There is not any other spot on the surface of the globe where
I have experienced a happiness so complete as I obtained in it
in 1799. Let any bachelor who cannot divine what this assertion
may mean, be informed, that it was then and there I entered into
marriage; and the covenant was ratified in the office of the
Clerk of the Peace for the county of Lanarkshire.[188]
Walker was obstinate, but not vindictive. Dr. James Sims offered
him £1000 in 1806 to prosecute his adversaries for conspiracy,
but he left them to their devices, and proved his quality by
outworking and superseding them. He replied to Moore’s flippant
version of the causes that led to the division and destruction of
the Royal Jennerian Society with perfect self-control and manifest
truthfulness, but at the same time with a simplicity not of this
world.[189] Jenner’s spite, Ring’s abuse, and the sneers of the
superfine did him little harm; and, if vaccination were beneficial,
I should have nothing but praise for the good people, who,
recognising the sincerity of his work, disregarded trivialities of
manner, and supported him loyally as a faithful servant.
Walker was nothing but a vaccinator. Day after day, in rain or
sunshine, his lank figure, and self-complacent visage under a
white broad-brimmed hat were to be seen making the round of the
vaccine stations. When he entered a room, he first glanced at the
table on which he expected to find his books. If any mothers had
placed their children’s bonnets or garments thereon, they were at
once swept off. He then ranged the company in order against the
wall like a schoolmaster, and delivered a short address on the
protection he was about to confer. The children’s names were taken
down with a preliminary caution to speak distinctly. When women
muttered or gabbled, the Doctor grew irritable, and would sometimes
make a troublesome woman spell her infant’s name half-a-dozen
times, adding, “Now thou wilt know how to speak plainly.” Having
got the names, he had next to look out for virus. The few mothers
who had ventured to return with their vaccinated babes for
examination, would perhaps lose courage and attempt to escape, when
Walker would dart to the door and arrest the fugitive, saying,
“Thou foolish woman! If thou wilt not do good to others, I will
bless thy little one,” and would proceed to gather what he called
his “Vaccine Roses.” He pursued his operations calmly indifferent
to the screams of the children and the complaints of the
mothers, and as he disposed of each case pronounced the illusory
benediction, “Thy child is safe: fear not: fare thee well.”
Walker died in 1830, aged seventy-one, after a short illness, in
which “he refused to take any medicine though himself a physician.”
In the Report of the London Vaccine Institution for 1831 we read--
He was a man who day after day, month after month, and year after
year, watched with the care of a parent the cause of which he
was so experienced an advocate; who was willing to know nothing
but the object of his early love, Vaccination; who for upwards
of a quarter of a century never omitted one lawful day going his
rounds to the numerous stations of the Institution; and who, it
may be almost said, ended his life with the lancet in his hand,
for he went round to the stations two days before he died.
Toward the end of his life, he used to boast that he had performed
upwards of one hundred thousand vaccinations. So far as vaccination
prevailed in London, it was chiefly through Walker’s exertions; and
he was just the character, being set going, to keep going whatever
the adverse evidence or obloquy. He had his plans and his methods,
and those who tried to modify them took nothing by their pains.
He was a man to have his own way, and those who did not like him
might leave him. Whether from incapacity or affectation, he made no
attempt at politeness, and said precisely what he thought without
accommodation. He was a piece of mechanism rather than of genial
humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[185] _The Vaccine Scourge containing the New Beggar’s Opera_ alias
_the Walkerian Farce_, alias _the London Vaccine Hoax; in answer to
Dr. Walker’s Jenneric Opera. A Rod for the Fool’s Back._ London,
1815. Pp. 122. Price 3s.
[186] _A Caution against Vaccine Swindlers and Imposters._ By John
Ring. London, 1816. Pp. 140.
[187] _The Life of John Walker, M.D., Graduate of the University of
Leyden; Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London;
and late Director of the Royal Jennerian and London Vaccine
Institutions._ By John Epps, M.D., London, 1831. Pp. 342.
[188] _John Walker’s Reply to James Moore._ London, 1818. Pp. 16.
[189] _John Walker’s Reply to James Moore on his Mis-Statements
respecting the Vaccine Establishments in the Metropolis and their
Officers and Servants both Living and Dead._ London, 1818. Pp. 114.