May I not with perfect confidence congratulate my country and society at large on their beholding in the mild form of the Cowpox, an antidote that is capable of extirpating from the earth a disease which is every hour devouring its victims; a disease that has ever been considered as the severest scourge of the human race! It is unnecessary to discuss these wild words--it is sufficient to record them as evidence of what it was possible to assert in the year 1800--and assert, too, whilst as yet the Cowpox that was to work the miracle was one thing in the hands of Jenner, and another in those of Pearson and Woodville! The pamphlet published, Jenner’s other business in London was to undermine the institution for Vaccine Pock Inoculation. He went about insinuating and protesting that its founders and officers neither knew what was true Variolæ Vaccinæ, nor how to use it; that not only were they ignorant, but perverse; and that the immeasurable blessing he had been the means of conveying to mankind would never be rightly enjoyed until there was an Institution with Edward Jenner for its guide and director. In playing this game Jenner had facilities and advantages. No one, not Pearson himself, contested his position as advertiser of the New Inoculation, and to the public he was its representative. He had attempted nothing and had no mishaps to account for: these attached to Woodville and other credulous and active experimenters. Moreover he had no awkward information to contend with in those he addressed--they listened, were informed, were convinced. Jenner’s conduct at this juncture, in relation to Pearson and Woodville, has been stigmatised as mean, thankless, despicable. These be hard words. His tactics were the common tactics of men in whom self-love is predominant, and we have not the strength for the use of the appropriate epithets with the frequency that experience requires. The poor were the chief sufferers from smallpox, and under the name of the poor Jenner advanced his project. He drew up the following memorandum, which he submitted to the Earl of Egremont, and circulated privately-- PROPOSAL FOR A PUBLIC INSTITUTION FOR VACCINE INOCULATION. Having now pursued the inquiry into the nature of the Cowpox to so great an extent as to be able positively to declare that those who have gone through this mild disease are rendered perfectly secure from the contagion of the Smallpox; and being convinced from numberless instances that the occupations of the mechanic or the labourer will meet with no interruption during its progress, and the infected and uninfected may mingle together in the most perfect safety, I conceive that an Institution for the Gratuitous Inoculation of the lower classes of society in the Metropolis would be attended with the most beneficial consequences, and that it might be so constituted as to diffuse its benefits throughout every part of the British Empire. EDWARD JENNER.