BARON’S LIFE OF JENNER.
We owe much to Baron’s Life of Jenner, but as a collection of
evidence rather than as an organic biography. It is verbose and
loosely put together, and would never be read unless by some one
in quest of information, or with nothing better to do. Fortunately
Baron was reverent and not critical. Jenner was to him a sacred
being, admirable in all relations, whose only contention was with
“the blindness and wickedness of his traducers.” Lives written in
this temper are often most instructive. Tales are told and letters
produced in pious simplicity that biographers of the judicious
order discreetly suppress.
Baron made Jenner’s acquaintance in the summer of 1808 when he was
living at Fladong’s Hotel, Oxford Street, revelling in a fool’s
paradise as to his importance in the formation of the National
Vaccine Establishment. Baron had recently come from Edinburgh, and
says,--
I was about to commence practice: all the world was before me.
In seeking the acquaintance of Jenner I was impelled mainly by a
desire to do homage to a man whose public and private character
had already secured my warmest admiration. I little thought that
it would so speedily lead to an intimacy, and ultimately to a
friendship, which terminated only at his death, and placed me in
a relationship to his memory that no one could have anticipated.
The greatness of his fame, his exalted talents, and the honours
heaped upon him by all the most distinguished public bodies of
the civilised world, while they made me desirous of offering
my tribute of respect to him, forbade the expectation of more
than such an acknowledgment as a youth, circumstanced as I was,
might have expected. I soon, however, perceived that I had to do
with an individual who did not square his manners by the cold
formality of the world. He condescended as to an equal; the
restraint and embarrassment that might naturally have been felt
in the presence of one so eminent vanished in an instant. The
simple dignity of his aspect, the kind and familiar tone of his
language, and the perfect sincerity and good faith manifested in
all he said and did, could not fail to win the heart of anyone
not insensible to such qualities. Though more than twenty years
have elapsed since this interview took place, I remember it, and
all its accompaniments, with the most perfect accuracy. He was
dressed in a blue coat, white waistcoat, nankeen breeches, and
white stockings. All the tables in his apartment were covered
with letters and papers on the subject of vaccination, and the
establishment of the National Vaccine Institution. He talked
to me of the excellent article which had lately appeared in
the _Edinburgh Review_, relative to the vaccine controversy.
He spoke with great good humour also of the conduct of the
anti-vaccinists, and gave me some pamphlets illustrative of the
controversy then going on. The day before he had had an interview
with the Princess of Wales, and he showed me a watch which her
Royal Highness had presented to him on that occasion.[205]
The passage is a long one, but it has some value in itself, and
exhibits Baron’s habitual attitude toward his hero. In his private
relations, Jenner was amiable, but it is with his public life
that we are concerned, and find so reprehensible. Mischievous
leaders and teachers are frequently distinguished by private
graces; and austere personal virtue is frequently associated with
bland indifference to conventional immoralities; and we need
not go far to discover counterparts of Jenner in ordinary life.
Nothing is commoner than suavity combined with self-love that is
malignant and mendacious when thwarted. All is pleasant as long
as admiration prevails, but with dissent or resistance the sunny
temper vanishes, and clouds of contempt and fury overspread the
spiritual sky. A sharp test of character is a man’s disposition to
his adversaries; and Jenner was never magnanimous. His conduct to
Pearson, Woodville, and Walker has been sufficiently described; and
similar jealousy and spitefulness were displayed to whoever dared
to impugn his infallibility in the prevention of smallpox. No one,
for instance, could have brought forward the fact that smallpox
occasionally succeeded vaccination with more simple good faith than
Goldson; yet Jenner wrote of him with insufferable insolence--an
insolence that is thrown into stronger relief by the knowledge
that what Goldson testified is accepted at this day, even by
vaccinators, as indisputable matter-of-course. His bully, too, John
Ring, attacked Goldson, and Jenner, in writing to Dunning, 23rd
December, 1804, thus excused his brutality--
You speak of Ring and Goldson. Recollect there was not time to
be cool. What lover of Vaccination--what man, well acquainted
with its nature, and that of Smallpox, could read Goldson’s book,
and lay it down coolly? Ring, the moment he read it, and what
indeed was infinitely worse than the book itself, its murderous
harbinger--the advertisement, instantly charged his blunderbuss,
and fired it in the face of the author. I must freely confess, I
do not feel so cool about this Mr. Goldson as you do. His book
has sent many a victim to a premature grave; and would have sent
many more, but for the humanity and zeal of yourself and others
who stepped forward to counteract its dreadful tendency.[206]
In the same spirit he wrote to Baron, 6th November, 1810, of Brown
of Musselburgh, who had reported certain cases of smallpox after
vaccination in a London newspaper--
Some notice must be taken of Mr. Brown’s communication; but
if he thinks he shall be able to draw me into controversy, he
will be mistaken. His letter, under the veil of candour and
liberality, is full of fraud and artifice; for he knows that
every insinuation and argument he has advanced, have been
refuted by the first medical characters in Edinburgh and Dublin.
But the mild, gentle, complaisant antagonist, is a character
more difficult to deal with than one who boldly shows his
ferocity.[207]
As applied to Brown, sagacious and sincere, this was the very
ecstasy of abuse. Even Brown’s adversaries within his own
neighbourhood, ultimately yielded to his contention. In the
_Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_ of July, 1818, we read--
Before we conclude, we must in justice to ourselves pay the
_amende honorable_ to Mr. Brown of Musselburgh, whose opinions we
strenuously controverted in 1809; and to which we now, in 1818,
confess ourselves partly converts in consequence of increased
experience and observation.
In short, calm discussion of vaccination with Jenner was never
possible. Inquiry was borne down with clamour, and scepticism
denounced as malevolence. “He could not altogether escape,” says
Baron, “from the annoyance occasioned by _the blindness and
wickedness_ of his traducers”[208]--and all were traducers who were
not believers. Indeed, Baron could only account for the perversity
of those who did not recognise Jenner as the saviour of mankind
from smallpox by a resort to the doctrine of inbred depravity,
saying--
We are compelled to believe that there is a principle in our
nature which has too strong an affinity for what is untrue to
permit the understanding to discern or acknowledge an opposite
principle till both the moral and intellectual vision has been
purified and strengthened.[209]
Purified and strengthened, and the affinity with falsehood
dissolved, it became possible for the understanding to appreciate
the virtue of cowpox and the veracity of its advertiser!
Jenner, it may be said, instinctively resented investigation. He
was uneasy in conscious duplicity. He knew there was no safety
in vaccination as practised; for the cowpox employed was not the
horsegrease cowpox he had commended as efficacious. What he had
prescribed was disregarded; what he had condemned was approved;
but, strange to say, he was praised and rewarded by the world as
if cowpox had been his specific! Jenner accepted the situation,
and possibly came to believe (after a fashion) that he was
enjoying no more than his own; but under the circumstances it
was not surprising that he shrank from criticism, kept his early
publications out of the way, and resorted to scolding and shrieking
whenever scrutiny appeared imminent.
Worse even than his behaviour to investigators and opponents was
his treatment of those who converted vaccination to practice.
The _Inquiry_ was no handbook, and Pearson, Woodville, and other
early vaccinators, had to make their own way, not only unassisted,
but with Jenner ready to appropriate their successes and to
reproach them with their failures. Baron avers that nothing in
the art of vaccination was due to any one but Jenner himself,
qualifying this praise with a slight exception in favour of Dr.
Bryce of Edinburgh, who made the discovery that if a subject under
vaccination is re-vaccinated, the subsequent inoculation is caught
up and brought to maturity with the precedent--a phenomenon that
as Bryce’s Test was used to ascertain whether true vaccine fever
was operative. But even Bryce received scant acknowledgment, and
Baron tries to make out that Jenner was possessed of the fact ere
it was announced.[210] Jenner’s meanness toward those who displayed
any intelligent independence in co-operation with him is written
at large in Baron’s biography, but with such innocence that it
would be absurd to describe it as indecent. His good faith is
perfect, and it is only a critical reader that finds out how he is
identified with Jenner, seeing merit nowhere save in his abject
servitors and feminine _claque_.
Vaccinators at this day allow that the influence of vaccination
wears out and ought to be renewed; yet Jenner would not listen for
a moment to such a modification of its perpetual prophylaxy. Baron
writes--
The year 1804, in Jenner’s estimation, formed an era in the
history of the Variolæ Vaccinæ. The assertion, that the Cowpox
afforded only a temporary security was then insisted on. Had it
been correct, it would have deprived the discovery of nearly
all its value. This assertion was very easily made; and in the
infancy of the practice could not be well disproved. To these
circumstances it was owing, that the crude and unsupported
statements of Mr. Goldson acquired any influence. Dr. Jenner
himself, from the commencement, perceived that in his cases of
failure, Cowpox had never been properly taken.[211]
When in 1813 Lord Boringdon introduced his bill to Parliament for
the restriction of variolation, Lord Ellenborough observed--
No doubt Vaccination is of some use, but if the noble lord
considers it a complete preventive of Smallpox, I differ from
him in opinion. At the same time, I have proved my respect for
the discovery by having my eight children vaccinated. I believe
in the efficacy of Vaccination to a certain extent. It may
prevent the disorder for eight or nine years; and in a large city
like this with a large family of children, even this limited
protection is desirable.
In this declaration the Chief Justice was not singular, but
expressed the general conviction of the public who held by
vaccination in spite of the manifest failure of the early promises
made for it. Nevertheless Jenner was extremely annoyed: it was to
him as the formal deliverance of judgment. Baron says--
I have seldom seen Jenner more disturbed than he was by this
occurrence; not certainly because he had any fears that the
unsupported assertion of his lordship would prove correct, but
because it unhappily accorded with popular prejudices, and when
uttered by such a person, in such an assembly, was calculated
to do unspeakable mischief by unsettling the confidence of
numberless anxious parents, and by attempting to deprive
Vaccination of more than half its virtue.[212]
Thorough was Baron in his defence of Jenner: no inconsistency
appalled him. He records in capitals (as produced) the following
as Jenner’s solemn and final testimony, written, a few days before
he expired, on the back of a letter, bearing the post-mark, 14th
January, 1823--
MY OPINION OF VACCINATION IS PRECISELY AS IT WAS WHEN I FIRST
PROMULGATED THE DISCOVERY. IT IS NOT IN THE LEAST STRENGTHENED
BY ANY EVENT THAT HAS HAPPENED, FOR IT COULD GAIN NO STRENGTH;
IT IS NOT IN THE LEAST WEAKENED, FOR IF THE FAILURES YOU SPEAK
OF HAD NOT HAPPENED, THE TRUTH OF MY ASSERTIONS RESPECTING THOSE
COINCIDENCES WHICH OCCASIONED THEM WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE
OUT.[213]
Self-deception after this pattern is far from uncommon, and is
proof against evidence and death itself; but Jenner was not
quite so crazy as his words imply. From his first opinion about
vaccination, and its absolute efficacy against smallpox (unlike
anything hitherto known in medical experience) he had retreated
considerably. Even so early as 1804 he had reduced his claim for
vaccination to equality with variolation. In that year he observed--
What I have said on Vaccination is true. If properly conducted,
it secures the constitution as much as Variolous Inoculation
possibly can. It is the Smallpox in a purer form than that which
has been current among us for twelve centuries past.[214]
And again Baron cites him as saying--
Duly and efficiently performed, Vaccination will protect the
constitution from subsequent attacks of Smallpox, as much as that
disease itself will. _I never expected that it would do more_,
and it will not, I believe, do less.[215]
Jenner presumed freely on the forgetfulness of those he addressed.
In a document so well known as his petition to the House of Commons
in 1802, he expressly claimed that a person inoculated with cowpox
was thereby “rendered perfectly secure from the infection of
smallpox through life”; nor would the furore which attended the
introduction of the practice have been possible had it been set
forth as no more than a milder form of variolation. That cowpox
was equivalent to smallpox for inoculation was laughed at by
the variolators; but that a vaccinated person was as safe from
smallpox as one who had passed through the disease, was true in no
other sense than that Jenner wished it to be true, and prophesied
accordingly. It was by such contrivances that he broke his own
fall, and alleviated the disenchantment of the credulous.
Oddly enough Jenner’s fiction, that vaccination was as good against
smallpox as smallpox itself, was revived in the innocence of
ignorance by Sir William Gull before a committee of the House of
Commons in 1871. “Vaccination is as protective against smallpox
as smallpox itself,” said the fashionable physician. Confutation
was, however, at hand. Mr. Marson (for thirty-five years resident
surgeon of the Highgate Smallpox Hospital) attested that cases of
smallpox after smallpox were comparatively rare--not 1 per cent.;
whilst 84 per cent. of those admitted to the Hospital in 1864 were
vaccinated. An instructive contrast between the logic of fancy and
matter of fact!
Baron, with unscrupulous disregard of evidence, complains that
vaccination should ever have been represented as an infallible
preventive of smallpox; so that as pointed out in the Report of the
Royal College of Physicians in 1807, “the fate of the new practice
was made to hang on the occurrence of a single case of smallpox”;
and goes on to observe--
This, I am sorry to say, was a great misapprehension; the
opposers of Vaccination endeavoured to place the fate of
Vaccination on such an issue; but if Jenner’s principles be
duly considered, he never at any time sanctioned such an idea;
and long before the practice of Vaccination became general, he
anticipated failures, and explained the circumstances under which
they were most likely to occur.[216]
The summary answer to this statement is, that it is untrue. Jenner
anticipated no failures. On the contrary, he vehemently denied
them; and when denial could no longer avail, he invented a variety
of excuses, such as spurious cowpox and omnipresent herpes, to
account for their occurrence; though always ready (as we have seen)
to hark back to his original assertion that vaccination was “an
infallible preventive of smallpox.” Baron did not like the word
“infallibility.” He writes--
I am not sure that the expression was ever used by Dr. Jenner
himself. If he did use it, he certainly very soon accompanied
it with the necessary qualification. He may perhaps at the
outset have stated his opinion somewhat too decidedly; but no
one qualified to judge can doubt that from the very beginning he
was possessed of the gauge by which to measure the virtues of
Vaccination.[217]
Whether he did make use of the word “infallible” is of slight
importance. There are various modes in which the same meaning may
be conveyed, and Jenner’s was unequivocal. It was in 1801 that
appealing to the rigid scrutiny that had taken place in the first
professional circles of Europe, he deliberately proclaimed it as
certain--
That the human frame, when once it has felt the influence of
the genuine Cowpox in the way that has been described, is never
afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by the
Smallpox.[218]
When Lord Ellenborough in 1813 described vaccination as affording
no more than a temporary security from smallpox, he merely
expressed the diminished confidence of the community in the
practice; but it is the habit of adventurers to ascribe adverse
manifestations of public feeling to petty causes; and thus Jenner
held that the Chief Justice was indulging a personal grudge when he
threw doubt on the perpetual efficacy of his prescription. On one
occasion, so ran the story, Ellenborough was relating in a company
at St. James’s how Jenner had so little faith in cowpox that he
had used smallpox to inoculate his own child, when he was suddenly
confronted by an irate personage, who exclaimed, “I am Dr. Jenner,
and what you have stated is not true!” whereupon Ellenborough slunk
aside in confusion. The fact of the rencontre in the sensational
form, we may credit as we please; but about the variolation of
Jenner’s child there is no doubt whatever. We have the circumstance
recorded by himself with such explanation as he considered adequate.
Turning to the _Inquiry_, we find under Case XXII. that Robert F.
Jenner, aged eleven months, was vaccinated on 12th April, 1798,
and that he did not receive the infection. The operation was not
repeated, and he remained unvaccinated. Some time afterwards,
whilst Jenner was residing at Cheltenham, Mr. Cother, a surgeon,
happened to drop in, and having taken the child in his arms,
mentioned in the course of conversation, that he had just left a
family suffering from smallpox. “Sir,” cried Jenner, “you know not
what you are doing! That child is not protected.” What was to be
done? “There was no doubt on my mind,” says Jenner, “that the boy
was infected;” and having none of the precious horsegrease cowpox
in his possession, he held that he was without alternative, and by
Mr. Cother the lad was immediately inoculated with smallpox.
The fact in due course got abroad, and, as Baron relates, was made
the most of by the opponents of vaccination--
One observed, “Dr. Jenner may say what he likes about
Vaccination, but we know for certain that he has inoculated his
own son with Smallpox.” Another repeated this statement with the
addition, that he had done so because he mistrusted Vaccination.
A third added another tint to deepen the colouring, affirming
that he knew that Dr. Jenner had abandoned his confidence in
Vaccination, and the proof is incontestable, as he has inoculated
his own child with Smallpox. These stories passed from mouth to
mouth, and afterwards appeared in print with every malignant
interpretation.[219]
Such talk was very natural, nor was it without justification.
Jenner ought to have proved his sincerity by the vaccination of
his son; and he who denounced variolation and variolators with
such bitterness might have accepted the risk of infection from
Mr. Cother rather than have compromised himself so injuriously.
Moreover (as was asked at the time) if the child was infected, what
was the use of inoculation? Variolation and vaccination (it was
argued) may be serviceable in keeping off smallpox, but are of no
avail after infection.
Vaccination has been described as a remarkable survival of
superstition in hygiene--many, who disowning all other dodges for
the maintenance of health, holding by it. Of course Jenner knew
nothing of hygiene in the scientific sense--it was revealed after
his time; but it is noteworthy that in none of his publications
or letters is there any anticipation of the truth that has proved
so fruitful in our experience, namely, that ill-health indicates
ill-living, and that the misery of disease is only remediable in
so far as we come out of the conditions of disease. Whilst of
such truth he knew nothing, he might have known something. It lay
plainly before him that smallpox was an affliction of the poor,
and of the prosperous in so far as they shared the conditions of
the poor, but he never recognised the fact. On the contrary, he
cherished the fantasy that various diseases were derived from
association with animals; and that thus smallpox originated in
cowpox, which in turn came from horsegrease. “There,” said he
to his nephew, pointing to a horse with greasy heels, “there is
the source of smallpox.”[220] To entertain such an opinion was
to be stone-blind to the true causes of disease, and therefore
we have no reason for surprise that the Jenner household lived
in chronic ill-health, piously submissive to what they supposed
the divine will. Typhus fever was recurrent in the household
without a suspicion that anything was amiss on the human side.
There was a genius named Dawes Worgan, whom Jenner received into
his family as tutor to his son, but ere a year had elapsed the
poor fellow had two attacks of typhus, and finally succumbed to
pulmonary consumption in 1809, in his nineteenth year. Chantry
Cottage, Jenner’s residence at Berkeley, was no temple of Hygeia:
on the contrary, such a place at this day would be a terror to a
respectable neighbourhood, and subject to the attention of the
sanitary inspector.
The principle of vaccination conceded--that health may be purchased
by disease, it was not surprising that it was thought that measles
and scarlet fever could be extirpated by similar treatment. Sir
Humphry Davy suggested that hydrophobia might be anticipated by the
inoculation of another animal virus, but Jenner held that cowpox
should be tried--“nothing like leather.” It was reported from
Constantinople that the plague itself was stayed by vaccination,
and that experiments, exactly like those used to demonstrate its
power against smallpox, had been repeated with complete success.
There was not, however, enterprise in the East for the development
of the quackery.
Jenner taught that distemper in dogs was preventible by
vaccination, and accumulated a variety of “first-rate evidence”
in proof. It was no transitory whim. He vaccinated twenty of the
King’s staghounds in 1801, and in 1809 contributed a paper to the
Medico-Chirurgical Society on the subject, wherein he expressed
the opinion that the disease had only existed in England for the
past half century. Several great fox hunters had their hounds
vaccinated, and the results were pronounced satisfactory.[221]
Why, then, was the practice not continued? Why is not distemper
exterminated? May we not say the reason is plain? The first-rate
evidence was illusory. Men are apt to create the facts they wish
for, but as desire subsides, they recover their normal eyesight.
Cowpox, we are persuaded, was as good against distemper in dogs as
against smallpox in human beings, and but for extraneous causes, it
would have been abandoned for the one as for the other.
For Jenner it has to be said, that if deceived, he had much to
excuse his self-deception. There are men possessed of convictions
which they maintain in the face of an indifferent or antagonistic
world, but Jenner was not such a man. If his _Inquiry_ had gone
the way of waste-paper, he would have offered no resistance; but
instead, it was proclaimed by Pearson as worthy of universal
attention, and the hour being propitious, the middle-aged country
doctor suddenly found himself treated as the deliverer of mankind
from smallpox, whilst Pearson, his promoter, was swept aside as
a half-hearted worshipper of the new divinity. Adulation was
administered without measure, and if Jenner took it for true, and
was led to imagine that he had more in him than he ever imagined,
what marvel! He became the centre of a European craze of a
character and intensity that is perhaps without parallel. Emperors
and kings, statesmen and philanthropists, men of science, and
in short the whole educated world conspired to do him reverence.
The craze gradually abated, and the abatement was most decided
in the country of its origin, and chiefly in London where cowpox
and its advertiser were most closely scrutinised. Jenner abhorred
London. There he had proposed to flourish as a West-End physician,
and there he had encountered a dismal failure. There, too, his
antagonists were active, and their demonstration of the futility
of his assertions most conclusive. We see his temper toward London
in such a passage as the following from a letter to Dunning, dated
Cheltenham, 21st February, 1806--
What havoc the Anti-Vaccinists have made in town by the
re-introduction of Variolous Inoculation! It is computed that
not less than 6000 persons in the metropolis, and the adjacent
villages, have fallen victims to the Smallpox since April last.
One would scarcely conceive it possible, but these murders are,
for the most part, to be attributed to the absurd productions of
Moseley, Rowley, and that pert little Squirrel, to say nothing
of Goldson. It is about London that the venom of these deadly
serpents chiefly flows.[222]
Whilst the doors of almost every scientific corporation in the
world were thrown open to receive him, the Royal College of
Physicians of London maintained an honourable reserve; and when
in 1814 his claim to admission was strongly urged, the majority
insisted that, if received, he should submit to the usual
examination--a sufficient check in Jenner’s case.[223] The College
has been reproached for its treatment of “the immortal benefactor
of the human race,” but it is forgotten how intimately the leading
members were acquainted with his immortality, and with what
disgust they must have received his confession in 1807 as to the
non-existence of spurious cowpox.
Toward the close of his life, Jenner rarely appeared in London.
His last visit took place in 1814, when he was presented to the
Emperor of Russia. “I am happy to think,” said Alexander, “that
you have received the thanks, the applause, and the gratitude of
the world;” to which Jenner made answer, “I have received the
thanks and the applause, but _not_ the gratitude of the world”--the
absent gratitude being a periphrase for absent cash, and a hint
to the Czar that he might repeat the superb munificence of his
grandmother, Catharine, to her inoculator Dimsdale. The Emperor,
however, gave nothing, and Jenner retired keenly disappointed.
Whatever the imperial disposition, Jenner did little to render it
more propitious by using his audience to denounce Walker and the
Friends by whom vaccination was at that time chiefly promoted; for
as Alexander said, “I love the good Quakers: they are my friends,
indeed;” and whoever slandered them was not likely to advance in
his favour.
With all he got Jenner reckoned himself ill-paid; and taking
the words of his admirers for sincere, he was ill-paid. Many a
successful slayer of his kind had much more from the House of
Commons with less fuss than their ideal preserver; but there is
often a measure of sincerity within insincerity, and many of those
who praised Jenner most rapturously felt that he had not been dealt
with illiberally as the advertiser of cowpox.
Jenner’s wife died in 1815, an ailing, pious, affectionate woman,
and thenceforth he dwelt in retirement until his death on the
26th of January, 1823, at the age of seventy-four. “Never,” he
wrote to his friend Gardner on 13th January, a week before his
demise, “Never was I involved in so many perplexities.” Hailed with
acclamation in 1800-2 as the saviour of mankind from smallpox,
during the remaining twenty years of his life he underwent a
steady course of discredit as failure after failure was recorded
and attested against vaccination. Appropriate therefore was
his farewell to the world in 1823, “Never was I involved in so
many perplexities.” There was not enthusiasm left to effect the
interment of his remains in Westminster Abbey, and the funeral
took place at Berkeley. An attempt was made to obtain a grant from
Parliament for a monument, but the proposal fell flat. Baron then
set on foot a subscription for the purpose, but it met with little
encouragement. The only public bodies which contributed anything
were the Edinburgh Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the first
sending £50 and the second £10. With much difficulty sufficient
was scraped together to order a statue from Sievier, which was
set up at the west end of the nave of Gloucester Cathedral. The
front panel of the pedestal originally bore the dates of birth and
death, but Baron had them removed, considering the word JENNER all
significant.
In latter times, in 1859, a statue was erected to his memory in
Trafalgar Square, London, close by the College of Physicians, but
it was felt to have an air of possible quackery about it, and by
and bye was quietly removed to a corner in Kensington Gardens.
There is, as I have remarked, a measure of sincerity even in
insincerity; and it is impossible for any one with a lively sense
of veracity to _know_ Edward Jenner and entertain for him any
respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[205] Vol. ii. p. 136.
[206] Vol. ii. p. 24.
[207] _Ibid._ p. 47.
[208] Vol. ii. p. 148.
[209] Vol. ii. p. 110.
[210] Vol. i. p. 450.
[211] Vol. ii. p. 18.
[212] Vol. ii. p. 197.
[213] Vol. ii. p. 311
[214] Vol. ii. p. 15.
[215] Vol. ii. p. 135.
[216] Vol. ii. p. 135.
[217] Vol. ii. p. 134
[218] _Continuation of Facts and Observations_, p. 181.
[219] Vol. ii. pp. 43-49 and 198.
[220] Vol. i. p. 135.
[221] Vol. i. pp. 444, 450; Vol. ii. p. 148.
[222] Vol. ii. p. 352. The London Bills of Mortality record 1685
deaths in 1805 and 1158 in 1806 from Smallpox--numbers in no
respect extraordinary.
[223] Vol. ii. p. 191.