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

PART II.—VACCINATION.

CHAPTER I.

JENNER’S EARLIER YEARS.

The competent biographer, it is said, must be an admirer of his subject, for only so far as he sympathises can he understand. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. But I neither propose to write a Life of Jenner, nor do I believe it essential to insight to sympathise where compelled to reprobate. In Jenner’s case we have to deal with an accident rather than with a vigorous personification of evil. It was his fate to have a happy (or unhappy) thought, adapted to the humour and practice of his time, which was immediately caught up and carried to world-wide issues. In himself, he was as ordinary a character as was ever thrust into greatness. For the mischief of his thought, some of his contemporaries were as responsible as himself—some, indeed, more blameworthy. With Bishop Butler I may ask, “Why may not whole communities be seized with fits of insanity, as well as individuals?” and with him aver, “Nothing else can account for a great part of what we read in history.” The common mind passes at times into unwholesome conditions, wherein the words of Paul are exemplified, “For this cause shall God send them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”

Edward Jenner, the son of a clergyman, was born at Berkeley, Gloucestershire, on 17th May, 1749. After the usual education of a youth of his class, he was apprenticed to Mr. Ludlow, surgeon and apothecary, of Sodbury, near Bristol; and on the completion of his time (1770) was sent to London, where he resided for two years with Dr. John Hunter, who increased his means for scientific inquiry by the reception of pupils, caring much more for his menagerie at Brompton than for patients, and utilising his pupils as assistants in his researches. Captain Cook returned from his first voyage of discovery in 1771, and his collection of specimens of natural history was assigned to Hunter for arrangement, who set Jenner to work upon them; and, it is said, he did his duty so well that he was offered the appointment of naturalist in Cook’s next expedition. Jenner was, however, eager to commence business as country surgeon, and in 1772, at the age of 23, he returned to his native vale, legally qualified by his experience at Sodbury, and his two years with Hunter, to practise at discretion on the good folk of Berkeley.

It may be said that Jenner’s was a poor sort of training for a medical man, but it is to be questioned if he lost much by his ignorance; for a century ago medical knowledge was largely absurdity, and practice mischief; and he did best who stood most frequently helpless in the presence of Nature. Sir Benjamin Brodie relates how he served when a young man with a general practitioner near Leicester Square—

Hunter’s name is often used as a sort of consecration of Jenner, but for no obvious reason. Hunter confirmed, if he did not beget in Jenner a strong liking for natural history; and when Jenner was settled in the country, he often availed himself of his services as observer and collector, writing to him for information about the habits of the cuckoo, the breeding of toads and frogs, and the sexes of eels; for cuckoos’ stomachs, crows and magpies’ nests, for bats, hedgehogs, blackbirds, lizards, hares, and fossils; for a cock salmon, for salmon spawn and fry, for a large porpoise, “for love or money;” for the arm of a certain patient when he dies; suggesting horrible experiments on hedgehogs, bats, and dogs, and describing one of special atrocity upon an ass. The most serious proposition in their correspondence was that Jenner should come to London as a teacher of natural history, but Hunter threw out the suggestion with hesitation, the qualification for the appointment being 1000 guineas down. Jenner had improved, or supposed he had improved, the preparation of tartar emetic, and Hunter wrote—

Hunter died in 1793, and there is no evidence that Jenner submitted to his judgment the question of Vaccination, if even we allow that prior to that date the project had occurred to Jenner himself. It is certain that he mentioned to Hunter that country folk believed that to catch cowpox was to be secure from smallpox, and that Hunter repeated the fact in his conversation and lectures; but there is no reference to the matter in Hunter’s writing and correspondence.

It is the habit of Jenner’s admirers to represent him as a patient investigator to whom a great thought dawned in boyhood, which was brought forth in the maturity of life. In conformity with this legend, it is related that when an apprentice at Sodbury, a young woman came to his master’s surgery, and smallpox being mentioned, she said, “I cannot take that disease, for I have had cowpox;” and her observation was pondered in his heart; whereon Dr. Baron, his biographer, ecstatically launches forth—

Against such a paragraph we may write, Sheer romance! Jenner was by no means reticent, and that the prevention of smallpox was for any length of time the burden of his soul, nowhere appears. The romance came into being after date in order to make much of little, and to justify payment in cash and reputation. For, taking Vaccination at the utmost, it was a slight advance upon existent knowledge and practice. In the first place, it was a notorious belief in many dairy districts, that to contract cowpox was equivalent to smallpox in averting a subsequent attack of smallpox. In the second place, inoculation with smallpox was the custom of the time; and if infection with cowpox prevented smallpox, why should not inoculation with cowpox do so as effectually as inoculation with smallpox? The intelligence requisite to reach a conclusion so obvious was not great, and therefore it was no cause for surprise that when Jenner’s claim as originator of Vaccination was brought forward, his priority should be disputed from several quarters; as by Benjamin Jesty of Yetminster, who inoculated his wife and sons with cowpox in 1774; by Nash of Shaftesbury; Mrs. Rendall, and others. Jenner was not insensible to the force of these claims, but evaded them under the plea that there was cowpox and cowpox, and that he had discovered and defined the right sort.

In parts of Holstein, too, cowpox was regarded as good against smallpox, and on more than one occasion was deliberately employed for the purpose. Plett, a village schoolmaster, near Kiel, inoculated three children with the disease in 1791, who were afterwards credited with resisting variolous infection in consequence of their vaccination.[86]

How thoroughly the asserted prophylaxy of cowpox was known, Jenner himself was accustomed to bear witness. He was a member of two clubs, the Medico-Convivial which met at Rodborough, and the Convivio-Medical which met at Alveston; and he used to bring cowpox so persistently under discussion, that, he said, he was threatened with expulsion if he did not desist. “We know,” said the jovial doctors, “that an attack of cowpox is reputed to prevent smallpox, but we know that it does not, and that should end the matter.”[87]

In pursuance of the tactics that would represent Vaccination as the outcome of the labour of many years, we have the following extraordinary narrative from Baron, Jenner’s biographer—

Many are the marvellous relations in ancient and modern history, but in the records of the supernatural it is questionable if there be anything to match the preceding. Painters depict the runaway apprentice listening on Highgate Hill to the bells as they pealed, “Turn again Whittington, twice Lord Mayor of London,” but they might find a finer subject in the young Gloucestershire surgeon, aged 31, habited “in blue coat and yellow buttons, buckskins, well polished jockey boots with handsome silver spurs, a smart whip with silver handle, and hair done up in a club under a broad-brimmed hat,”[89] with eye fixed in vision, contemplating his glorious destiny, through clouds of doubt and difficulty, full twenty years ahead; standing like another Aaron, censer in hand, between the living and the dead until the plague was stayed! Verily, if we do not see miracles, it is because we do not choose to look for them.

The chapter of the wonderful is not exhausted; yet greater things remain. Says Baron, and recollect the year was 1780 and Jenner aged 31—

Which is to say, that in 1780, Jenner, aged 31, had arrived at the conclusion which he offered to the world in 1798 at the mature age of 49; and in the meanwhile allowed mankind to perish from smallpox, he having their salvation in his hands!

The miraculous conversation, says Baron, was concluded by Jenner in words to the following effect—

Gardner, Jenner’s friend, who played the part of alter ego in the asseveration of an early date for Vaccination, was a dealer in wines and spirits. Charity believeth all things, but even charity would exhibit a sceptical countenance when what it is a man’s interest to prove and have placed to his credit, is in itself improbable; which, if true, might be proved by documents and witnesses; but which is merely supported by his own word and that of a friend. Let me repeat, there was never a vestige of evidence adduced for the revelations of 1780 beyond the bare assertions of Jenner and Gardner; and further, that they are radically at variance with the tenor and dates of Jenner’s first publication—The Inquiry of 1798.

The next date to which we come is 1787, in which year Jenner is represented as having taken his nephew, George, into a stable to look at a horse with diseased heels—

“There,” said he, pointing to the horse’s heels, “is the source of smallpox. I have much to say on that subject, which I hope in due time to give to the world.”[91]

Baron gives no authority for this anecdote. It is probably ante-dated six or seven years.

In 1788 Jenner married Catherine Kingscote. In his domestic relations, he was devotedly affectionate, even uxorious; ready to defer any duty and to surrender any advantage to the pleasures of home.

As the phrase ran, Jenner was a good hand at a “copy of verses,” and one of these, “Signs of Rain,” commencing—

has a place in nearly all poetical collections.

In 1792 Jenner applied to the University of St. Andrews for the degree of Doctor of Physic. It cost £15, and nothing more.

Hunter used to say to speculative pupils, “Don’t think, but try; be patient, be accurate;” and Jenner, in relation to cowpox, required the advice; for, by his own account, he was content to think of cowpox for at least a quarter of a century, whilst he knew by intuition its true origin, its magical efficacy, and future triumph without any trial. His first experiment was made in November, 1789, upon his son Edward, his first-born, an infant of eighteen months.

“He was inoculated with cowpox?”

O, no!

“Then with grease from a horse’s heel?”

Not at all!

“With what then?”

Why, with swinepox; and it answered!

The child sickened on the eighth day; a few pustules appeared; they were late and slow in their progress, and small, but they proved sufficient. The poor child was then put through what was styled the Variolous Test: not once or twice, but five or six times at various intervals, he was inoculated with smallpox without other obvious effect than local inflammation and erysipelas. Nothing ever claimed for cowpox turned out more satisfactorily than this experiment with swinepox—supposing we trust Jenner.

Arguing from the records (and we have nothing else to argue from) it was not until about 1795 that Jenner turned his attention with serious purpose to cowpox. This Baron allows, saying—

But Baron fails to specify what were the projected experiments, or the difficulties which hindered their performance. It is a common nuisance in “sympathetic” biographies to have unlimited drafts made upon one’s credulity. The evidence of example would go to prove that Jenner placed his trust in swinepox rather than cowpox, at least as late as 1789.

In April, 1795, a general inoculation took place at Berkeley on Dimsdale’s plan; that is to say, all in the district who had not had smallpox were inoculated with the disease, so that they might sicken together and do no mischief. Among the Berkeleyans was one Joseph Merret, who, 1770, had attended horses with greasy heels and at the same time milked cows, and from the cows had contracted cowpox. Jenner inoculated him repeatedly with smallpox on this occasion, but with no effect; whence he concluded that the attack of cowpox in 1770 had maintained Merret secure from smallpox for five-and-twenty years.[93]

Jenner’s aim was now directed to demonstrate that the common faith in cowpox as a defence against smallpox was well-founded; and to do so it was necessary to clear away two objections—

First, That some who had caught cowpox had subsequently suffered smallpox.

To which he answered—

Various eruptions occur on the teats of cows, which are confounded with cowpox, and infect the milkers; and these, I admit, do not protect from smallpox.

In a letter to Edward Gardner in 1798 he remarked—

Second, That some who had contracted true cowpox had nevertheless fallen victims to smallpox.

To which he answered—

Admitted: but then the milker had not received infection from the cow at the proper time, but at a stage of the eruption too early or too late.

If the reader will set these points clearly before him, he will have the measure of Jenner’s claim. It was a claim to define the truth there was in a popular belief—not to make an independent discovery.

Jenner at this juncture had staked his hope on the identification of horsegrease with cowpox. Yet even in this identification he does not seem to have been original.

It was a persuasion among the farmers that pox on the cows was derived from grease on the horse; and that infection with horsegrease was just as good against smallpox as infection with its derivative cowpox. The fact, however, of this derivation of cowpox from horsegrease was contested, but Jenner was positive. Writing in 1794 he said—

Challenged to produce direct evidence that grease from the horse produced pox in the cow, he met with considerable difficulty, so that on 2nd August, 1797, he had to write—

In the matter of horsegrease, it is to be observed as Dr. Mason Good informs us, “that for ages blacksmiths and farriers, who had been infected with grease, were considered as generally insusceptible of variolous contagion.”[97] Wherefore, to Jenner is not to be ascribed the discovery of horsegrease as good against smallpox; but merely that he held with certain farmers that it was the cause of cowpox, and one in constitution with cowpox; and thus endeavoured to combine the tradition of the stable with that of the dairy.

It was not until 1796 that Jenner made any experiment with cowpox—up to that date, whatever his visions, he was in Hunter’s phrase a thinker, not a trier. On 14th May of that year, he took matter from the hand of Sarah Nelmes, who had been infected by her master’s cows, and inserted it by two incisions in the arm of James Phipps, a child of eight years of age. The boy went through the disease in a regular manner, and on the 1st July was inoculated with smallpox without effect, to Jenner’s intense satisfaction. He communicated the event to Gardner in the following letter—

But the experiments could not be pursued, for, from July, 1796 till the spring of 1798, Cowpox disappeared from the dairies around Berkeley, and, as we have seen, horsegrease was also unattainable. Jenner had, however, resolved on publication. Life was advancing; he had made no mark in the world; and, as he wrote to Gardner—

At first he proposed to embody his views in a paper for the Royal Society, but on second thoughts determined to issue a pamphlet. Having read his manuscript to Dr. Worthington, Mr. Paytherus, and Mr. H. Hicks, assembled round the table of Mr. Thomas Westfaling, at Rudhall, near Ross, Herefordshire, and having secured their approval, the matter was put to press, and about the end of June, 1798, appeared—