Royal Jennerian Society with perfect self-control and manifest truthfulness, but at the same time with a simplicity not of this world. 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."

John Walker's Reply to James Moore this Mis-Statements respecting the Vaccine. Establisiments in the Metropolis and their Officers and Servants both Living and Dead, Lon lon, 1818. Pp. 114.

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

He was a man who day after day, month after month, and year after year, watched with the care of a parent the cause of which he was so experienced an advocate; who was willing to know nothing but the object of his early love, Vaccination; who for upwards of a quarter of a century never omitted one lawful day going his rounds to the numerous stations of the Institution; and who, it may be almost said, ended his life with the lancet in his hand, for he went round to the stations two days before he died.

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.

CHAPTER XXV.

JENNER'S LATER WRITINGS.

JENNER'S later writings were chiefly apologies for the failures of vaccination. His position was one of much difficulty, and its peculiarity is rarely, if ever, recognised. For example, how few know that his Inquiry published in 1798, that master-piece of medical induction," according to Mr. John Simon, was kept out of print and referred to as rarely as possible after 1801-2.

“Why?”

The answer to the question is so important that at the risk of repetition I give it explicitly.

The Inquiry was suppressed because of its ascription of cowpox to horsegrease.

It was the belief of dairy-maids in Gloucestershire that to have had cowpox was to be secure from smallpox. Jenner was much impressed by the rustic superstition, and brought it so persistently before his medical brethren at their convivial assemblies, that they threatened to expel him if he bored them any longer with the subject. "It is true," they said, "that the maids believe an attack of cowpox keeps off smallpox, but we know they are wrong; for we are all familiar with cases of smallpox after cowpox.

Thus frustrated, Jenner's ingenuity took another turn. It was the belief of farriers that if infected in dressing horses' greasy heels, they too were secure from smallpox. The area of this conviction was narrower than that of the dairy-maids, farriers being neither so numerous, nor so observant of their beauty but Jenner entertained their faith and converted it to his purpose.

Horsegrease protected from smallpox, if cowpox did not. But might there not be one sort of cowpox that answered to the dairy-maids' faith, if another sort did not? Happy thought! The defensive sort was derived from the horsegrease which protected the farriers: the non-defensive originated spontaneously on the cows. Men, fresh from handling horses' greasy heels, milked cows and communicated to them the horses' disease. Milkmaids, who in turn contracted from the cows that sort of pox, were like the farriers secure from smallpox, yea securer; whilst milkmaids who contracted pox spontaneously developed on cows were not secure. The milkmaids' superstition was therefore justifiable: they were right and they were wrong-right when they got pox through the cow from the horse; wrong when they got pox from the cow simply.

Why then, it may be asked, did not Jenner dismiss the cow from consideration? Why did he not base his

prescription on the farriers' experience, and use and recommend horsegrease exclusively for inoculation? The question is an obvious one, but it is not easy to make out Jenner's answer with precision. His assertion was, that

The virus from the horse is not to be relied upon as rendering the system secure from variolous infection, but the matter produced by it on the nipple of the cow is perfectly so

which was to say that horsegrease attained its highest prophylaxy after transmission through the cow.

Such was the doctrine of the Inquiry, "that masterpiece of medical induction."

When the doctrine came to be reduced to practice, difficulties arose. Cowpox was considered wholesome and credible, whilst horsegrease was repulsive and incredible. Still fact was fact; and many were ready to accept horsegrease through the cow, or without the cow, if such indeed were the source of the new salvation. Cowpox proved to be a rare commodity, whilst horsegrease was common, and numerous attempts were made to produce cowpox by means of grease, but ineffectually. At some attempts, Jenner officiated. Marshall records

that

Mr. Sewell, Assistant Professor at the Royal Veterinary College, informs me that he was a witness to a series of experiments, twice repeated, at the College in the presence of Dr. Jenner, Dr. Woodville, Mr. Wachsel, and Mr. Turner, with a view to produce the vaccine disease on the teats of a cow. The matter of grease had been immediately taken from the horse, and variously applied by long continued friction, punctures, scarifications, and by scratching the surface with a needle; but from these trials neither inflammation, nor any affection resembling a pock resulted.*

To this discomfiture Jenner had to submit. His ascription of cowpox to horsegrease was stigmatised as an error of which the less that was said the better. It is true that other experimenters were more successful, and that

A Popular Summary of Vaccination with reference to its Efficacy and Probable Cause of Failure. By John Marshall, M.R.C.S. and District Vaccinator of the National Vaccine Establishment. London, 1830. Pp. 96.

Loy of Whitby and Sacco of Milan dispensed with the cow as a superfluity and used matter direct from the horse for inoculation, passing the virus from arm to arm into general circulation until what was equine was lost sight of and indistinguishable from what was vaccine; but Jenner did not care to be justified at the risk of his popularity and the money on which he had set his heart. He saw how the wind of public favour was blowing, and went with it. Since horsegrease was disliked, he consented to its oblivion. Pearson, the chief promoter and organiser of vaccination, scoffed at horsegrease, and used spontaneous cowpox, which Jenner knew was of no avail against smallpox; but he entered no protest upon that score. On the contrary, he let the futile practice go on; he claimed it as his own; and he set about manufacturing excuses for the failures which were imminent.

Spurious cowpox was one of the most dexterous of these excuses. If injury or smallpox followed vaccination, the disaster was ascribed to spurious cowpox. Jenner's Further Observations, published in 1799, was designed to teach "how to distinguish with accuracy between that peculiar pustule which is the true Cow Pock and that which is spurious;" and in his Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation in 1801 even greater stress was laid on the distinction. By and bye, however, the excuse worked more harm than advantage. People got terrified with the mischiefs ascribed to spurious cowpox, and as which was genuine and which spurious was only discoverable in their consequences, they began to decline to have either. It then became expedient to deny spurious cowpox, which Jenner did. He confessed to the Royal College of Physicians that there was not a true and a false cowpox; and that by spurious cowpox he "meant nothing more than to express irregularity in the form and progress of the vaccine pustule from which its efficacy is inferred."

In view of facts like these, there is little cause for surprise that the publication of Jenner's Inquiry with its two supplements was not continued. What he set forth