Very good; but where are we? If similarity of pustule proved the identity of Smallpox and Horsegrease Cowpox, what did those graver dissimilarities between the diseases prove? That an objection so obvious should never have occurred to Jenner indicates the extent of his logical capacity.
Jenner’s expectation from the issue of the _Inquiry_ had nothing of the prophetic character described by his enthusiastic biographers. It is only necessary to peruse its pages and note the dates in order to perceive the impossibility of the vision of 1780 described by Baron when Jenner exhibited to Gardner his future glory, and how he was destined to stand like Aaron between the living and the dead until the plague was stayed. Alas! how many similar fables may we entertain because the means of detection are not, as in Jenner’s case, available.
When Jenner was writing, the English people were committed to Smallpox Inoculation, or more accurately Smallpox culture, and it was in competition with Smallpox that he advanced Cowpox. “If asked,” he said, “whether his investigation be matter of mere curiosity, or whether it tend to any beneficial purpose,” he replied by setting forth the draw-backs to the existing practice, and contrasting them with the advantages of his own.
Notwithstanding [he wrote] the happy effects of Inoculation, with all the improvements the practice has received since its first introduction into this country, it not very unfrequently produces deformity of the skin, and sometimes, under the best management, proves fatal. (P. 57.)
I have never known fatal effects arise from the Cowpox, even when impressed in the most unfavourable manner, producing extensive inflammations and suppurations on the hands; and as it clearly appears that this disease leaves the constitution in a state of perfect security from the infection of the Smallpox, may we not infer that a mode of Inoculation may be introduced preferable to that at present adopted, especially among those families, which, from previous circumstances, we may judge to be predisposed to have the disease unfavourably?
Inoculation was freely charged with exciting scrofula; thus Jenner observed--
In constitutions predisposed to scrofula, how frequently we see the inoculated Smallpox rouse into activity that distressful malady; and the issue does not seem to depend on the manner of the inoculation, for it as often occurs in those who receive it mildly as in those who receive it severely. (P. 60.)
