The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-Fact Chapters

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ROYAL JENNERIAN SOCIETY.

Jenner, jealous of Pearson, was anxious to supersede the Institution for the Inoculation of the Vaccine Pock established by him in 1799; but Jenner was what Scots call “a feckless creature,” whose wishes rarely issue in fruit. After his success in Parliament, he did not remain in London to improve his opportunities, but retreated to domestic quiet at Berkeley and Cheltenham. His friends, however, were mindful of him, and Dr. Hawes, Mr. Addington, surgeon, Benjamin Travers, and Joseph Leaper met in Queen Street, City, 3rd December, 1802, and resolved to establish a “Jennerian Society for the Extinction of the Small-Pox.” Mr. Addington transmitted the resolution of the meeting to Jenner, saying—

Joseph Fox of Lombard Street, dentist and enthusiastic promoter of the new inoculation, also wrote to him, 4th December, soliciting his co-operation—

But the ease-loving Jenner was not to be drawn. He wrote to Mr. Addington from Berkeley, 10th December, 1802—

The letter describes the man. He did not like to be troubled—not even when action stood for the advancement of his own glory. As Pearson observed, “If Vaccination had been left to Jenner, it would never have come to anything.” Benjamin Travers also wrote to him at the same time urging the necessity of his presence in London, but he was put off with similar excuses and with expectations of assistance from the public purse—

As Jenner was not to be had, the promoters set to work without him, and their triumph was complete when at a meeting in the London Tavern on 17th February, 1803, it was announced that his Majesty had graciously condescended to become the patron of “The Royal Jennerian Society for the Extermination of the Smallpox:” that her Majesty had with great benignity acquiesced in the request to become patroness: that his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and their Royal Highnesses the Duke of York, the Duke of Clarence, and the Duke of Cumberland, had evinced, in a most flattering manner, their willingness to accept the office of vice-patrons: that his Grace the Duke of Bedford had consented to fill the office of president; and that many prelates, noblemen, and gentlemen of the highest rank and respectability had agreed to be vice-presidents of the Society.

The approval of the Prince of Wales was conveyed in a letter of the Earl of Egremont, over which Baron, Jenner’s biographer (writing when the Prince had blossomed into George IV.), bursts into worship in capitals, as follows—

Subscriptions flowed in freely. The Corporation of London gave £500, the East India Company £100, the Duke of Bedford £50, and guineas ten, five, two and one were contributed with a liberality that attested the fervour of the common credulity. But it was much easier to get money than to administer it with a nice adjustment of means to ends. The Jennerians, too, were over-organised. There were a Medical Council and a Board of Directors. The Medical Council consisted of twenty-five Physicians and twenty-two Surgeons of the first eminence in London, with Jenner for president and Lettsom for vice-president. Such mechanism could never work, and at the point where real business was to be transacted, an officer was selected of extraordinary character.

John Walker was born at Cockermouth in 1759, and was a school-fellow of Woodville, subsequently physician to the London Smallpox Hospital. After a rambling career as blacksmith, engraver, and school-master, he turned his attention to medicine, graduated at Leyden, associated with French revolutionists in the guise of a member of the Society of Friends; then accompanied Dr. Marshall in a vaccinating cruise to the Mediterranean, from whence, after a variety of adventures in war and weather, he appeared in London in 1802, habited as a Quaker with a long beard—an apparition in a clean shaven community. Joseph Fox, the dentist of Lombard Street, gave him the use of a part of his house, and there, in his own words, “I set up my Vaccinium for the glorious cause.” As soon as the Jennerian Society was initiated, Walker was put forward by Joseph Fox and other Friends as inoculator-in-chief, and Walker made application in the following terms—

When the day of election arrived, four, out of many, were selected as candidates, one of them being Dr. Domeier, a German, strongly recommended by the Queen and Prince of Wales; but the Friends stood by their man, and Dr. Walker was appointed Resident Inoculator at the Central House of the Society in Salisbury Square with a salary of £200 a year, coal and candles, and liberty to take fees for private “vacciolation.”

The promoters of the Society, operating under the prestige of Jenner’s name, resolved to hold their annual festival on his birthday, the 17th of May; and at the first dinner in 1803 he was subjected to flatteries enough to turn any man’s head who does not know the reckless insincerity that prevails on such occasions. It was the adulation connected with the formation of this Society that as much as anything induced Jenner to set up as west-end physician. The attempt of the middle-aged country doctor was the occasion of much grim humour, and his consequent embarrassments were the concern of his friends for many a day. Apart from the inherent difficulties of the enterprise (social rather than medical) Jenner was constitutionally deficient in method and assiduity. Wrapped up in his wife and family, business was always set aside when they claimed his affectionate regard; and to leave London for Gloucestershire for some domestic cause was in his eyes procedure that required no defence—all which might be amiable, but it constantly annoyed and frustrated his associates; and it is not thus encumbered that any man can expect to make way in the world. When the anniversary in 1804 came round, Jenner was at Berkeley, and when pressed to attend he wrote—

If Jenner was idle and self-indulgent, Walker was the reverse. He was a fine specimen of the Genus, Fanatic. Possessed with a lust for what he called Vacciolation, he had a brow of brass, nerves of steel, and habits like clockwork. Thirteen stations were opened in London where cowpox was inoculated gratis, and in eighteen months Walker was able to announce that 12,288 patients had been operated on, and that 19,352 charges of virus had been dispatched to the country and foreign parts; whereon Baron observes—

The passage is noteworthy as representative of many similar passages in the literature of Vaccination. It might be described as dishonest, but the craft is so transparent that the epithet would be extravagant. The probable explanation is, that Vaccination had come to be regarded as so unquestionably beneficial that anything might be asserted in its favour, and that anything was true. Else a child might have asked how 12,000 or 24,000 vaccinations could by any possibility affect an immediate diminution in the deaths from smallpox in a population of eight or nine hundred thousand. Baron would also lead his readers to suppose that the low mortality of 1804, namely 622, was unexampled, though with the Bills of Mortality before him, he might have seen that the deaths in 1797 fell to 522; and he knew that the low figure of 1804 was not maintained, but rose to 1685 in 1805. But as remarked, any statement, if only it be favourable to Vaccination, is expected to pass muster as veracious, and the public credulity justifies the expectation.

Let us look at the London Bills for ourselves, taking the last ten years of the 18th and the first ten years of the 19th Centuries, and try to discover what they teach.

It is to be observed, that we have not here the record of the deaths in the whole of London, but merely the number of intramural interments, which diminished as a number of graveyards became gorged beyond capacity of decomposition and assimilation, and relief was sought in the cemeteries of extra-mural parishes, such as St. Pancras and Marylebone. It is only thus that the diminishing number of burials (which ranged from 25,000 to 30,000 during many years of the 18th Century) is to be accounted for. In this light we have to consider the following table, where we note fewer burials, less smallpox, less fevers, but more measles.

From whatever cause there was an abatement of smallpox, but it was a continuous abatement which had set in before Jenner was heard of; and at the same time we must repeat that at this day (when all swear by the unity of Nature and the correlation and convertibility of her forces) it is grossly unscientific to pick out smallpox from the zymotic diseases and deal with it as an independent entity. It is a fever among fevers, bred and propagated in the same conditions, and can never be studied apart from its associates without serious misunderstanding.

These Bills of Mortality, as compared with the more accurate statistics of our own time, are of little value; but, such as they are, they are constantly referred to, and their items used, as by Baron, as pretexts for most unwarrantable assertions. Any influence of Vaccination on the smallpox mortality of 1801-10 was practically nothing. Vaccination was limited to a few thousands, and those chiefly of the classes least subject to the disease. The great seething mass of metropolitan squalor, in which smallpox and typhus were endemic, was untouched by the vaccine lancet. If the new practice did good, it was in discrediting and discouraging the culture of smallpox in variolous inoculation.

To return to the Royal Jennerian Society. Its halcyon-days were of brief duration. Enthusiasm abated, subscriptions fell off, cases of smallpox after vaccination came to be heard of, and serious illness and death consequent upon “the benign and harmless operation.” Opponents waxed bold and could not be silenced. Then jealousies and dissensions began to operate within the Society. The financial secretary strove with the medical secretary. Dr. Walker’s habits and eccentricities, viewed at first with amusement, excited irritation and disgust, whilst Jenner’s easy-going mode of life and impecuniosity were a source of scandal and distrust. The climax was reached in 1806 when Jenner and Walker were set openly at loggerheads, and a fight to the death ensued.

Walker, it is to be said, never treated Jenner with respect. Like Pearson he took stock of his merits, and did not rate them highly, and would not listen to his dictation. “Vaccination,” he used to observe, “is extremely simple as to facts, while, as to causes, it is entirely out of the reach of medical men with all their theories.” Jenner, as president of the Medical Council, thought he had a right to be obeyed, but Walker was the last man in the world to yield obedience when he had formed an opposite conviction—

Of course such forbearance could not last long, and instructions issued by Walker to the Nottingham Vaccine Institution in March, 1806, were made the occasion of an open rupture. Jenner brought Walker’s conduct under the consideration of the Medical Council, and secured his condemnation. The question was then referred to the General Court of the Society on the 25th of July, when a motion that Walker he dismissed from his office was negatived by a majority of three, Walker being supported by Sir Joseph Banks and Jenner by Dr. Sims. But the victory was not satisfactory to Walker, and on the 8th of August he put an end to the strife by sending in his resignation.

Baron’s solemn account of the contest must appal every ingenuous reader. Jenner, it is written, regarded Walker’s proceedings as of “the most dangerous character,” as “placing in peril the safety of the practice,” and “as likely to wreck the Society”; so that had he not retired Jenner would have been compelled to withdraw his countenance from Salisbury Square. As we read we exclaim, Whatever did the dreadful Doctor do? Here is Baron’s answer—

Moore states the offence plainly—

Turning to the Life of Walker, by Dr. Epps, we have the difference ’twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee still further illustrated—

As in brawls and wars generally, the ostensible offence is rarely the true or entire offence, so when we revert to the events of 1805-6 we discover that Vaccination was being found out, and that Walker served Jenner’s purpose opportunely as scape-goat. Walker’s behaviour, too, constituted him a convenient victim. Many who cared nothing for his mode of “taking lymph” had been hurt by his scorn of their self-importance, and were ready to assist Jenner in effecting his humiliation. Mr. Cline, the surgeon, after listening to many speeches against Walker, summed up the indictment, “All they complain of are his dress and address.” A naval officer, meeting Walker on 25th July, said, “I came to town to-day to hold up my hand in your support. You and Jenner do not agree over some trifles, and your enemies wish to turn the fact to your hurt, but they have been beaten. Is the man who launches a vessel the only one who can navigate her? If Jenner were to live for fifty years to come, he could never have the authority of your experience.”

Jenner’s victory over Walker was utterly disastrous: it destroyed the Royal Jennerian Society. The substantial supporters of the Society were the adherents of Walker, and with him they seceded, secured another house in Salisbury Square, and established The London Vaccine Institution with Walker for manager. The remnant of the Jennerian Society appointed James Sheridan Knowles, a young Irish surgeon, as Walker’s successor, and for distinction purchased him the degree of M.D. from St. Andrews. He had the suavity that Walker disdained, and little else beside. He neglected his duties, and soon the traffic in the “benign fluid” was transferred to the new establishment. Ultimately the lease, fixtures, and furniture of the Jennerian house were disposed of, and a retreat effected to humbler offices, until in 1813 what remained of the Society was incorporated in Walker’s concern.

Walker obtained much assistance from members of the Society of Friends, and the fact affords Moore (Jenner’s apologist) occasion for certain sneers. He describes the meetings in Salisbury Square as—

Dismissed he was not, and the peace that ensued on his resignation was destruction. The success of Walker’s Institution (necessarily dependent on subscriptions) he accounts for by an anecdote like this—

It is not to be imagined, however, that the collapse of the Royal Jennerian Society disposed of Jenner and his party. There was Jenner to provide for: he could not with decency be forsaken: and there was a stock of vaccine virus to be kept up, for which pride forbade dependence on Walker’s dispensary. It was in vain to appeal afresh to a benevolent public, whose confidence had gone elsewhere, and whose suspicions were excited. It was therefore determined to resort to Government for help. The political influence of the Jennerian party was considerable, and we shall see to what purpose it was exerted.

ORIGIN OF THE TERM VACCINATION.

A new practice wants a new name, and it was some time before one was found for Inoculation with Cowpox. Dr. Walker made use of Vacciolation and to Vacciolate in 1802; but it was Richard Dunning, surgeon, of Plymouth, who introduced Vaccination and to Vaccinate. Jenner writing to Dunning, 2nd April, 1804, observed—

Vaccination is not as yet a term accepted everywhere. Among the uneducated we hear of being “cut for the cowpock,” or simply of being “cut.”

Whilst Vaccination was a useful word, it was, and is, often misapplied. Jenner’s prescription of Horsegrease Cowpox was Equination rather than Vaccination; and when virus from the horse was employed neat, Equination was the accurate designation without question. Again, when virus was generated from Smallpox on heifers, the subsequent inoculation of the human subject was not Vaccination but Variolation, or at least Variolous Vaccination. The virus in public use at this day derived from Horsegrease Cowpox, Cowpox, Horsepox, Smallpox, Smallpox Cowpox, etc., etc., inoculated from arm-to-arm, in series prolonged and unsearchable, is called Vaccination; but it is Vaccination in faith or fancy, evidence to anything but uncertainty being unattainable.