Looking back on the final years of last century, it is much to be regretted that more pains were not taken to hold Jenner fast to his position that smallpox never followed cowpox, and to demonstrate beyond contention that it was not true. It certainly was not true; the evidence to that fact was indisputable; but few were disposed to follow Ingenhousz into the West of England and search for the requisite proof; and Ingenhousz was cut out of the controversy by his death at Bowood on 7th September, 1799. Presently Jenner managed to have the contention shifted from the experience of the dairies to vaccination from arm to arm and the illusory variolous test, and the advantage of a decision at the springs of fallacy was lost. In the general confusion which ensued Jenner came to be taken for a discoverer, and he posed diligently in the character, when he was nothing more than the advertiser of the vulgar opinion of his neighbourhood, with the modification that not Cowpox but Horsegrease Cowpox was the true and infallible specific. The fact is so clear, that he was a mere advertiser, that it would not be worth repetition, were it not so systematically treated as unseen. How distinctly it was at first recognised appears in a letter of thanks for a copy of the _Inquiry_ addressed to Jenner by Francis Knight, a London surgeon, wherein he observed-- CLIFFORD STREET, _10th September, 1798_. I have read your publication with much satisfaction; and, from a long residence in the dairy part of Wiltshire, as well as in Gloucestershire, I know the facts to be well supported; at least, it was a general opinion among the dairymen, that those who had received the cowpox were not susceptible of the variolous disease. The cowpox pustule is very familiar to my eye, and I am quite charmed with the delineation of it in your plates. You have opened to the world a very curious field of investigation, and it is too interesting a subject to die with the day.[103] In these remarks of Knight, we have Jenner’s position accurately defined. He made himself responsible for “the general opinion among the dairymen”; and had some one at that time shown in perspicuous and emphatic fashion that the dairymen were wrong, Jenner would have been summarily disposed of. Vain, however, are such regrets; and we may find comfort in the reflection that there is an order in the universe which converts misfortune into means for greater and rarer good. Another letter to Jenner from Dr. Hicks contains these remarks-- BRISTOL, _3rd October, 1798_. I wish you had been able to have communicated the cowpox to the cow by means of inoculation from a greasy horse’s heel, for your work would then have been more complete and satisfactory. I do not see that you need hesitate to accept the invitation given you to inoculate with the cowpox, convinced as you are that it will secure the persons so inoculated from ever being infected with the smallpox.