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CHAPTER XXIV.

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—

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—

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—

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—

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—

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—

Ring delivered his mind unequivocally. Walker was an imposter, and the London Vaccine Institution prospered by his frauds—

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—

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—

Lastly, he appealed to the members of the Jennerian Society, demanding—

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—

Ring was an awkward champion. He sneered at Walker’s diplomas certifying fitness to act as vaccinator—

Forgetful that it was from St. Andrews that Jenner purchased his M.D.!

With equal recklessness, he denounced Walker as a vaccinator, saying—

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—

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—

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—

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—

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.