London. His last visit took place in 1814, when he was presented to the Emperor of Russia. "I am happy to think," said Alexander, "that you have received the thanks, the applause, and the gratitude of the world;" to which Jenner made answer, "I have received the thanks and the applause, but not the gratitude of the world"-the absent gratitude being a periphrase for absent cash, and a hint to the Czar that he might repeat the superb munificence of his grandmother, Catharine, to her inoculator Dimsdale. The Emperor, however, gave nothing, and Jenner retired keenly disappointed. Whatever the imperial disposition, Jenner did little to render it more propitious by using his audience to denounce. Walker and the Friends by whom vaccination was at that time chiefly promoted; for as Alexander said, “I love the good Quakers: they are my friends, indeed;" and whoever slandered them was not likely to advance in his favour.

With all he got Jenner reckoned himself ill-paid; and taking the words of his admirers for sincere, he was illpaid. Many a successful slayer of his kind had much more from the House of Commons with less fuss than their ideal preserver; but there is often a measure of sincerity within insincerity, and many of those who praised Jenner most rapturously felt that he had not been dealt with illiberally as the advertiser of cowpox.

Jenner's wife died in 1815, an ailing, pious, affectionate woman, and thenceforth he dwelt in retirement until his death on the 26th of January, 1823, at the age of seventyfour. "Never," he wrote to his friend Gardner on 13th January, a week before his demise, "Never was I involved in so many perplexities." Hailed with acclamation in 1800-2 as the saviour of mankind from smallpox, during the remaining twenty years of his life he underwent a steady course of discredit as failure after failure was recorded and attested against vaccination. Appropriate therefore was his farewell to the world in 1823, “Never was I involved in so many perplexities." There was not enthusiasm left to effect the interment of his remains in

Westminster Abbey, and the funeral took place at Berkeley. An attempt was made to obtain a grant from Parliament for a monument, but the proposal fell flat. Baron then set on foot a subscription for the purpose, but it met with little encouragement. The only public bodies which contributed anything were the Edinburgh Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the first sending £50 and the second £10. With much difficulty sufficient was scraped together to order a statue from Sievier, which was set up at the west end of the nave of Gloucester Cathedral. The front panel of the pedestal originally bore the dates of birth and death, but Baron had them. removed, considering the word JENNER all significant.

In latter times, in 1859, a statue was erected to his memory in Trafalgar Square, London, close by the College of Physicians, but it was felt to have an air of possible quackery about it, and by and bye was quietly removed. to a corner in Kensington Gardens. There is, as I have remarked, a measure of sincerity even in insincerity; and it is impossible for any one with a lively sense of veracity to know Edward Jenner and entertain for him any respect.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE MEDICAL POSITION IN 1823.

WHEN Jenner died in 1823, the judgment of the majority of the people was pronounced against cowpox inoculation; but medical men, who are expected to know something, and do something, against every ailment, rarely surrender a prescription until it can be replaced by another. The doctors therefore held by vaccination, but on modified terms; and the position to which they had been reduced. is set forth in an article in the Edinburgh Review, for November, 1822, concerning which Jenner wrote to Gardner, 13th February, 1823, a week before his death

I have an attack from a quarter I did not expect, the Edinburgh Review. These people understand literature better than physic. It will do incalculable mischief. I put it down at 100,000 deaths at least. Never was I involved in so many perplexities.

What an extraordinary article! working mischief incalculable, and bad for at least one hundred thousand deaths! A criticism in the Quarterly is said to have killed Keats, upon which Byron remarked

'Twas strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

If, however, Jenner was right, it will be allowed, I think, that the murder of a poet was exceeded in atrocity by the slaughter of at least one hundred thousand ordinary mortals. Wherefore, to discover the manner of the great iniquity, I looked up the Edinburgh Review and discovered the diabolical article. It is entitled "Vaccination and Smallpox"; is obviously written by the editor, Jeffrey; and the rock of offence was at once apparent. Doubt is thrown on the efficacy of vaccination to prevent smallpox; ergo, vaccination thus discredited will be neglected; ergo, vaccination thus neglected will enlarge the domain of smallpox; ergo, at least one hundred thousand persons will perish. Q. E. D. But it will be asked, "What did Jeffrey say?" The article thus opens

Vaccination, we are perfectly persuaded, is a very great blessing to mankind; but not quite so great a blessing, nor so complete a protection, as its early defenders conceived it to be. The proof of this has been admitted with great reluctance; but it has unfortu nately become too strong for denial or resistance. The first answers given to the instances of failure, with which the friends of Vaccination were pressed, were, either that the disease which had occurred after Vaccination was Chickenpox, and not Smallpox; or that the process of Vaccination had been unskilfully or imperfectly conducted; or that it was one of those very rare cases which occurred in the times of Inoculation, and from which Vaccination itself did not pretend to be wholly exempt.

The Report of the Vaccine Pock Institution for 1803 is cited, as follows, to show how absolute was the confidence in vaccination in the days of inexperience

We have been alarmed two or three times with intelligence of Smallpox occurring several weeks or months after our patients had

undergone the Cowpox. We thought it our duty to visit and examine these patients, and also to inquire into their history among their attendants, and by these means we obtained the completest satisfaction that the pretended Smallpox was generally the Chickenpox.

As time went on, cases of smallpox after vaccination kept multiplying, and the various excuses to account for their occurrence, though obstinately asserted, utterly broke down. There remained no doubt whatever that to be vaccinated in the most approved fashion afforded no guarantee against sinallpox. In 1820, said Jeffrey, the Board of the National Vaccine Establishment was compelled to make the following melancholy admission

It is true that we have received accounts from different parts of the country of numerous cases of Smallpox having occurred after Vaccination; and we cannot doubt that the prejudices of the people against this preventive expedient are assignable (and not altogether unreasonably perhaps) to this cause. These cases the Board has been industriously employed in investigating; and though it appears that many of them rest only on hearsay evidence, and that others seem to have undergone the Vaccine Process imperfectly some years since when it was less well understood, and practised less skilfully than it ought to be; yet, after every reasonable deduction, we are compelled to allow that too many still remain on undeniable proof, to leave any doubt that the pretensions of Vaccination to the merit of a perfect and exclusive security in all cases against Smallpox, were admitted at first too unreservedly.

The significance of a confession like the foregoing is not to be estimated literally. It was exacted under irresistible pressure of facts, numerous, definite and undeniable, after every method of excuse and prevarication had been exhausted. In short, it was an authoritative retractation of the flaming medical testimony with which vaccination had been commended to the public in 1800, when the heads of the profession thought it their duty to declare in the newspapers—

That those persons who have had the Cowpox are perfectly secure from the future infection of the Smallpox.

And of Jenner's emphatic assurance

That the human frame, when once it has felt the influence of the

genuine Cowpox is never afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by the Smallpox.

The occasion of Jeffrey's article was the publication by Dr. John Thomson of a treatise on a violent epidemic in Edinburgh, and other parts of Scotland, in 1818-19.* The disease differed from ordinary smallpox in respect of the smallness of the pustules, which contained a milky fluid, and began to dry up on the fourth or fifth day. In Thomson's words

The epidemic appeared to exhibit all the varieties of Smallpox from the mildest to the most malignant; and it was curious to observe that the mildest forms, as well as the most malignant, were strictly vesicular eruptions, in which scarcely a trace of purulent matter was to be seen from their commencement to their termination.

Whether this epidemic was smallpox or chickenpox, was the question. It was chickenpox said some. It was modified smallpox said others. It probably was chickenpox said Thomson; and if so, he argued, chickenpox should be accounted a variety of smallpox. The chief cause of uncertainty was, that the vaccinated constituted the majority of sufferers

Had the unvaccinated alone been attacked [wrote Thomson], nothing, it appears to me, but the most unreasonable scepticism could ever have suggested a doubt of the disease being genuine Smallpox.

Thomson reported 556 cases in Edinburgh of which310 had been Vaccinated;

41 had had Smallpox; and

205 had neither been Vaccinated nor had Smallpox.

And William Gibson, surgeon at Robert Owen's mills, New Lanark, had 322 cases, of which

251 had been Vaccinated.

11 had had Smallpox, spontaneous or inoculated.
57 had neither been Vaccinated nor had Smallpox.

3 had had Smallpox and Cowpox simultaneously.

*An Account of the Varioloid Epidemic which has lately prevailed in Edinburgh and other Parts of Scotland; with Observations on the Identity of Chickenpox with Modified Smallpox. By John Thomson, M.D. London, 1820. Pp. 400.