with indifference or contempt. If it pleases people to believe in metempsychosis or the constitution of the moon in green cheese, the wise leave them to the enjoyment of their humour: On the other hand, I have to remark, that smallpox is a disease of wide range of intensity, from an ailment almost trivial to one invariably fatal; and this wide range of intensity was as characteristic of the disease before as since the introduction of vaccination. On what pretext then are mild cases of smallpox attributed to the influence of vaccination? There are mild and malignant cases of smallpox alike among the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and not unfrequently when the vaccinated and unvaccinated are found in approximate conditions, as in the same household, it is the unvaccinated who are most lightly afflicted, or who make the better recovery.

It often helps to a clearer apprehension of a position if we endeavour to conceive its opposite. We have seen Cobbett as an opponent of vaccination: let us try to think of him as its advocate. Suppose he had joined with the polite and educated mob in hailing Jenner as the saviour of mankind from smallpox, and assured the readers of the Register that they would be secure from the disease for ever if inoculated with cowpox-an easy and harmless operation. Then after a while imagine him reporting that he had been misled-that the operation was not so easy as represented, nor always so harmless. By and bye he would be the bearer of a more serious revelation. Some of the vaccinated, warranted secure, had taken smallpox, but such misadventures, he would explain, were due to the use of a wrong sort of cowpox, of which there was a spurious variety. But the suggestion of spurious cowpox creating alarm and discouragement of vaccination, it would be necessary for him to counteract the declaration with the avowal that by spurious cowpox was not meant spurious cowpox, but simply irregularities in the action of the genuine virus on the arms of the vaccinated. But even these excuses would be insufficient. It was not difficult to ascribe

smallpox after vaccination to careless practice, or to virus that was not the right sort of cowpox; but when smallpox was found to occur in numerous instances after Jenner's own vaccinations and those of the most accomplished practitioners, What was to be said? Why, what was said, that when vaccination did not prevent smallpox, it made it milder!

Imagine, if we can, Cobbett's honest and vigorous intelligence retreating through this slush of apology and prevarication Yet through such slush every follower of Jenner had to trudge.

I am not intent on setting Cobbett forth as a model of wisdom. I simply maintain that his common-sense was adequate to the judgment of vaccination, and that it was correctly exercised. Of physiology and hygiene he was as ignorant as his contemporaries; but if a lotion were sold to prevent toothache, and it did not prevent toothache, it would be safe to denounce its vendors as quacks, even though the vendors happened to be the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons. The causes of disease were unconsidered in Cobbett's days. It was not asked why people suffered from smallpox and other fevers, nor whether fevers were avoidable. Such maladies were accepted like bad weather, and encountered by medical dodges, or by charms like vaccination, the more irrational and nasty being taken for the more effective. Cobbett himself, if he did not believe in vaccination, believed in inoculation with smallpox. He had his children poxed in infancy, and when he argued against vaccination, it was in the confident. possession of a surer prophylactic. Taking smallpox for a probable calamity that could only occur once in a lifetime, it seemed to him expedient to incur the disease when convenient, and to have done with the dread of it. How far he was mistaken in this course I need not stay to debate. Suffice it to say, that he thought he could make sure that smallpox was smallpox, whilst what cowpox might be none could tell, especially after transmission through arms and constitution unnumbered and unknown.

The causes of smallpox, I said, were unconsidered in Cobbett's days. It never even entered into Jenner's head that the disease might be a consequence of bad conditions of life; nor did he try to explain why the malady was on the decrease ere he appeared with his magical prescription. The decrease was claimed for vaccination, but it had set in before vaccination was heard of, and was continued among those who never received it. No sanitary improvements had been effected to account for the abatement of the disease. To what, then, was it due? I answer, in part at least, to a progressive change in the diet of the people-to the substitution of tea for malt liquors, and to the displacement of arid fare by potatoes. The food of city folk up to the close of last century was closely akin to that of men at sea, and their scorbutic habit of body was notorious-a habit that rendered acute or chronic whatever disorders they were subject to. The remedy came of inclination and necessity rather than of intention. Tea was instinctively preferred by women, and the dearness of provisions compelled resort to the potato, easily grown and grateful to the palate as a mitigant of the saltness of beef, bacon, and fish. If any are disposed to dispute the fact of this revolution in the popular dietary, they may be referred to Cobbett. He witnessed the change, and persistently denounced it. Tea-drinking was to him an abomination. It was a slatternly indulgence, costly to the poor, and innutritious. Potatoes were as detestable. They were trash as compared with bread; wasteful, dirty, and unfit to satisfy a man's appetite. It is true that tea and potatoes are poor forms of food, but the one as a substitute for beer, and the other as an antiscorbutic, were eminently useful. It is not said that smallpox is caused or prevented by food, proper or improper, but that the character of food may predispose to disease, and intensify it; as is manifest on ship-board. Hence it is (in the absence of other adequate influences) that I am disposed to ascribe the abatement of smallpox which set in toward the close of last century to the

better blood of the people ameliorated by that increased consumption of tea and potatoes, against which Cobbett so blindly and vainly testified.

A last word about Cobbett. His prejudices had nearly always a creditable root. He hated potatoes because they were strenuously recommended by Wilberforce and other good and goody people as cheap food for the poor. Cobbett's contention was, that not cheap food, but political justice was the true remedy for popular misery. It was very nice of Wilberforce and his friends to be kind to the poor, but, said Cobbett, if they were first just, the poor might dispense with their kindness. If the poor had their own, they might have beer instead of tea, and bread and beef and bacon instead of potatoes, with much else besides. Cobbett was often enough in error, but behind all his perversities lay ardent good-will for the welfare of the greatest number of his countrymen; and the consideration now enjoyed by the working classes is largely due to his dauntless spirit and ununwearied exertions in presence of what appeared at the time to be omnipotent opposition.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE GROSVENOR CASE.

IT may be asked, Why, if Vaccination was proved useless and injurious, was it not entirely discontinued? but the question implies a logical consistency which is rarely exemplified in human experience. Vaccination was discontinued, but it was not entirely discontinued: it was chiefly continued among the upper and middleclasses where fees were to be had for its performance. It was admitted that the rite might not prevent smallpox, but it would make it milder. The last thing a medicine man admits is, that he is helpless and can do

nothing. Even in presence of that for which there is no remedy, it tends to his importance, and the satisfaction of the patient, and those around the patient, to make believe to do something. Now for smallpox, there was no preventive. Its causes were unknown. It broke out, and it disappeared, none knew how. Jenner's household was devastated with fever, but he never asked, why? As observed disease was accepted like so much bad weather. Whether fevers were avoidable, or whether they were consequences of ill living, were questions as yet outside cognizance. The predominant thought about smallpox was, that it might be dodged, be it from God or devil. Inoculation with smallpox was a dodge with disagreeable accompaniments: inoculation with cowpox was a dodge on easier terms: by a trick, that left every evil circumstance unaffected, smallpox was to be got rid of. In the nature of things, the dodge was ineffective-mercifully ineffective; for who that is wise would care to have the consequences of evil abated save by the putting away of evil? The dodge proved illusory in the presence of those who recommended it, but whilst a manifest failure as to the main intention, they had the craft to shift its efficacy to rendering the disease milder-a claim as to which no test was immediately available. Moreover, vaccination had the merit of action, which the quack, whether lay or professional, insists on at all hazards. To confess ignorance and inability is self-denial for which the quack's mind is unequal, as whoever is ailing and has friends may perceive. All come bearing advice and prescriptions for the control of nature, when, with simple quiescence and a right disposition of circumstances, nature is instant to effect recovery.

The failures of vaccination to prevent smallpox were chiefly visible among the poor, smallpox being predominantly an affliction of poverty; but in 1811 a case occurred in aristocratic life which produced more talk and dismay than scores of similar cases among trades-folk and artizans. Robert Grosvenor, son of Earl Grosvenor, vaccinated by Jenner in 1801 when a puny babe of a