accurately defined. He made himself responsible for "the general opinion among the dairymen"; and had some one at that time shown in perspicuous and emphatic fashion that the dairymen were wrong, Jenner would have been summarily disposed of. Vain, however, are such regrets; and we may find comfort in the reflection that there is an order in the universe which converts misfortune into means for greater and rarer good.

Another letter to Jenner from Dr. Hicks contains these remarks

BRISTOL, 3rd October, 1798.

I wish you had been able to have communicated the cowpox to the cow by means of inoculation from a greasy horse's heel, for your work would then have been more complete and satisfactory.

I do not see that you need hesitate to accept the invitation given you to inoculate with the cowpox, convinced as you are that it will secure the persons so inoculated from ever being infected with the smallpox.

Everlasting security from smallpox! Such was the unqualified promise, and with how little warrant! In presence of a Socratic inquirer with his persistent, how do you know? Jenner must have stood confounded.

A letter to Jenner from Dr. Percival, also contains some remarks worth notice. He wrote

MANCHESTER, 20th November, 1798.

The facts you have adduced incontestably prove the existence of the cowpox, and its ready communication to the human species. But a larger induction is yet necessary to evince that the virus of the Variola Vaccina renders the person who has been affected with it secure during the whole of life from the infection of the smallpox.

Mr. Simmons, an ingenious surgeon of this town, has inoculated a human subject with the ichor issuing from what is termed the grease in horses; but the fluid introduced, though eight punctures were made, neither occasioned inflammation nor eruption; yet the same child was soon afterwards inoculated with success for the smallpox. Mr. Simmons has now engaged a herd of cows, and is busily employed in making such experiments as your publication has suggested.

It is very remarkable, that the cowpox has been hitherto unnoticed in Cheshire, which is not less a dairy county than Gloucestershire, and where the office of milking is performed also by men and maid servants indiscriminately.

The frequent statement that Jenner's Inquiry was at first received with indifference is entirely untrue: on the contrary, it was read with interest from the outset, and the only check he met was due to his inability to supply the demands of correspondents for samples of the precious virus. Cowpox was absent for awhile from the dairies, and great was his relief and delight when toward the end of 1798 some matter was obtained from a farın at Stonehouse wherewith on the 27th November he vaccinated the children of his friend, Henry Hicks of Eastington; "the first gentleman," says Baron," who had the merit of submitting his own children to the new practice." Ere 1798 had passed away, Jenner had secured an energetic ally in Dr. George Pearson, F.R.S., Physician to St. George's Hospital, London.* Pearson entered into the cowpox question with his whole heart, and constituted himself a sort of partner in Jenner's project. He wrote to him—

LEICESTER SQUARE, 8th November, 1798.

Your name will live in the memory of mankind, as long as men possess gratitude for services and respect for benefactors; and if I can but get matter, I am much mistaken if I do make you live for

ever.

And in a more decided strain on 13th November

I wish you could secure me matter for inoculation, because, depend upon it, a thousand inacurate but imposing cases will be published against the specific nature of the disease by persons who want to send their names abroad about anything, and who will think you and me fair game.

In the same letter he told Jenner what some were saying about the suggested practice

You cannot imagine how fastidious the people are with regard to this business of the cowpox. One says that it is very filthy and nasty to derive it from the sore heels of horses. Another, that we shall introduce the diseases of animals among us, and that we have already too many of our own. A third sapient set say, it is a

Born at Rotherham, 1751. Graduated M.D., Edinburgh, and practised at Doncaster until 1784, when he removed to London. Died at his house in Hanover Square from a fall down stairs, 9th November, 1828.

strange odd kind of business, and they know not what to think of it. All this I hear very quietly, and recollect that a still more unfavourable reception was given to inoculation for the smallpox.

Such observations were natural and to be expected. Jenner wrote to Gardner that "brick-bats and hostile weapons of every sort were flying thick around him," but they were chiefly imaginary. His revelation was communicated to a ready world. It was no revolutionary project, but a seductive modification of existing practice. Inoculation with smallpox was the order of the day among all respectable people. The operation was troublesome and uncertain, perilous to patients and to those in contact with them; and, when all was done, it afforded no unquestionable security against the disease it was designed to avert. To a community thus harassed and anxious, came Jenner with his prescription and his promise Substitute cowpox for smallpox and you will escape from this distress, danger, doubt. You will have a harmless fever without pustules and without risk of infection, and the security from smallpox will be absolute and perpetual. What wonder that in such circumstances Jenner's message was heard gladly and accepted with grateful enthusiasm. That he should have encountered some resistance was inevitable, for what change is ever effected without opposition and ominous prediction? But the change Jenner proposed was the slightest of changes with the largest prospects of advantage. Unless these conditions are borne in mind, we shall never rightly understand the reception accorded by our forefathers to inoculation with cowpox.

*

CHAPTER IV.

PEARSON'S INQUIRY.

DR. PEARSON'S Inquiry concerning the History of the Cowpox is a remarkable proof of the alacrity and energy with which Jenner's project was entertained. As observed, Jenner's Inquiry was published at the end of June, 1798, and ere six months were over, in November, 1798, appeared Pearson's Inquiry, a masterly review of Jenner's; and not only a review, but a record of investigation, personal and by correspondence with country physicians and farmers; the entire work displaying a capacity for business to which Jenner was wholly unequal.

Cowpox did not come before Pearson as a novelty, nor Jenner in connection therewith. He relates

When I was in company with the late Mr. John Hunter, about nine years ago, I heard him communicate the information he had received from Dr. Jenner, that in Gloucestershire an infectious disorder frequently prevailed among the milch cows, named the Cowpox, in which there was an eruption on their teats; that those who milked such cows were liable to be affected with pustulous eruptions on their hands, which were also called the cowpox; that such persons as had undergone this DISEASE COULD NOT BE INFECTED BY THE VARIOLOUS POISON; and that as no patient had been known to die of the Cowpox, the practice of the inoculation of the poison of this disease, to supersede the Smallpox, might be found, on experience, to be a great improvement in physic.

I noted these observations, and constantly related them, when on the subject of Smallpox, in every course of lectures which I have given since that time. (P. 5.)

The communication of Jenner to Hunter was nothing of a discovery. There was no secret in the existence of Cowpox, nor in the belief that inoculation therewith fortified the sufferer against Smallpox. Dr. Pulteney, of Blandford, informed Pearson that

An Inquiry concerning the History of the Coupox, principally with a view to supersede and extinguish the Smallpox. By George Pearson, M.D., F.R.S., Physician to St. George's Hospital, etc. London, 1798, Svo., pp. 116.

Cowpox is well known in Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, and Devonshire. It is not unknown in Leicestershire, and other midland counties; but dairymen keep it a secret as much as possible, as it is disreputable to the cleanliness of their produce. (P. 8.)

In the northern counties and in Wales, Cowpox was either rarely seen or unknown. In Cheshire, as much of a dairy county as Gloucestershire, where also men acted as milkers, the disease was never met with. Where, however, Cowpox was recognised, the faith in its efficacy against Smallpox appeared to be general, and inoculators regarded it as a bar to their success. Thus Mr. Giffard, surgeon, Gillingham, wrote to Pearson, 9th August, 1798—

Cowpox is more known in Dorsetshire than in most counties. Last winter I inoculated three parishes, and some of the subjects told me they had had the Cowpox, and that they should not take the Smallpox; but I desired to inoculate them, and did so two or three times, but without effect. Persons never take the Smallpox after they have had the Cowpox. (P. 14.)

At a milk-farm on the Hampstead Road, Pearson found a man who had often seen Cowpox in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. He said that

He had known many who had had Cowpox, and they never suffered from the Smallpox, although it prevailed in their own families. To use his own words, they who have had the Cowpox "are hard to take the Smallpox." (P. 29.)

Mr. Rolph, surgeon, Peckham, who had practised in Gloucestershire, informed Pearson that

Cowpox was very frequently epizootic in the dairy-farms in the spring. A great number of instances of the Cowpox in milkers had fallen under his observation, but not a single mortal, or even dangerous, case occurred. There was not a medical man in Gloucestershire, or scarce a dairy-farmer, who did not know from his own experience, or that of others, that those who have suffered the Cowpox are exempt from the agency of the variolous poison. (P. 95.)

Dr. Croft likewise told Pearson

That in Staffordshire to his knowledge, the fact had been long known of the Cowpox, which prevails in that county, affording an exemption of the human subjects from the Smallpox. (P. 35.)