Woodville was eager to try cowpox, but Jenner had no supply, nor could any be had elsewhere. He therefore resorted to horsegrease, but could make nothing of it. In his own words-- Conceiving that the distemper might be produced by inoculating the nipples of Cows with the matter of the grease of Horses, I proceeded to try whether the Cowpox could be actually excited in this manner. Numerous experiments were accordingly made upon different Cows with the matter of grease, taken in the various stages of that disease, but without producing the desired effect. Neither were inoculations with this matter, nor with several other morbid secretions in the Horse, productive of any effects upon the human subject.[106] Thrice in person did Woodville submit to inoculation with horsegrease, but in vain. Others in London and elsewhere attempted to raise pox on cows in the same way without result save malediction on Jenner for originating such a troublesome quest. Thus closed 1798 with many anxious to try the new prescription whenever there was a chance. Early in the new year, there was a cry in London, ’Tis found! ’tis found! In Harrison’s dairy, Gray’s Inn Road, close by the Smallpox Hospital, cowpox was discovered, and thither hastened Woodville, Pearson, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir William Watson, Dr. Garthshore, Dr. Willan, and other medical men; and in their presence, on 19th January, Woodville inoculated six patients with the pox.[107] The eruptions on the cows’ teats were diligently compared with the description and plates in Jenner’s _Inquiry_, and pronounced identical. Four-fifths of the 200 cows in the dairy became affected, those not in milk escaping the disease; likewise some of the milkers, the first being Sarah Rice, who had undergone smallpox in childhood--a proof that smallpox did not prevent cowpox. “At the same time,” wrote Dr. Pearson, “I received the agreeable intelligence that the disease was also raging in the largest stock of cows on the New Road, near Paddington, to which no one could gain admittance but myself.” With cowpox thus provided in abundance, Pearson and Woodville set to work--Woodville at his Hospital, and Pearson in private practice. Be it observed, however, that this London cowpox was not Jenner’s cowpox. It was not horsegrease cowpox, but the variety stigmatised by Jenner as spurious. How Pearson and Woodville pressed forward with their enterprise appears from the following letter, enclosing cowpox threads, sent by Pearson to two hundred medical practitioners throughout the United Kingdom-- LEICESTER SQUARE, _12th March, 1799_. Sir,--I hope you will pardon me for taking the liberty to inform you (by way of additional evidence to the testimonies I have published on the subject of the Cowpox) that upwards of 160 patients, from two weeks to forty years of age, principally infants, have been inoculated since the 20th January last by Dr. Woodville and myself, separately....