Gregory was not blind to the extravagant claims made for Vaccination, and evidently had a lurking conviction that all was not gain in the substitution of the new practice for the old, saying--
Had not the discovery of Jenner interfered to interrupt its extension and improvement, Inoculation would have continued to this day increasing yearly in popularity.[75]
Yet was not Inoculation abolished. Sometimes when we get the devil out at the door, he presently re-enters by the window; and thus while Parliament was making an end of Inoculation in one form, it was reviving in another.
It is to be understood that Jenner’s cowpox, whatever it might be, was an uncommon and erratic disease, and its discovery and maintenance difficult. To provide a substitute, cows were from time to time inoculated with smallpox, and the resulting virus was used instead of the Jennerian specific. Lest one should be accused of questionable witness, let us refer to Dr. Seaton’s _Handbook of Vaccination_. There we read--
Mr. Ceely of Aylesbury in February, 1839, succeeded in inducing vaccine vesicles on two sturks by inoculation with variolous lymph, and in thus establishing lymph-stocks, which passed at once into extensive use, so that, in a few months, more than 2000 children had been vaccinated from them. In December, 1840, Mr. Badcock succeeded in variolating a cow at Brighton, and deriving therefrom a stock of genuine vaccine lymph. In this manner he has raised stocks of vaccine lymph for use on no fewer than thirty-seven separate occasions. The lymph thus obtained by him is now largely employed; it has been supplied to many hundreds of practitioners, and very many thousands of children have been vaccinated with it. Mr. Ceely’s experiments were repeated in America in 1852 by Dr. Adams of Waltham, and Dr. Putnam of Boston, who were able, it is said, to furnish the city and neighbourhood of Boston with all the vaccine matter used there since that period.
Again, Sir John Cordy Burrows, a surgeon, speaking as a magistrate, at Brighton on 5th February, 1876, observed--
The public seem scarcely to understand what Vaccination means. The vaccine lymph taken from a child is nothing more than what has passed from a smallpox patient through a cow. In 1856-58 I took an active part in inoculating seventeen cows with smallpox, producing in three cases vaccine lymph, and from these the world has been supplied.