The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-Fact ChaptersWhite, William
History
The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-Fact Chapters
White, William
Vaccination
existence, assailable by smallpox.” In a letter to his friend Moore
in 1810, Jenner said, “Cases of smallpox after inoculation are
innumerable.” And again, “Thousands might be collected; for every
parish in the kingdom can give its case.” And he asked another
correspondent, Dunning, in 1805, “Is it possible that any one can
be so absurd as to argue on the impossibility of smallpox after
vaccination!” And this from Jenner, who had deceived the nation
in 1802 with the assurance that, “inoculated cowpox was attended
with the singularly beneficial effect of rendering through life
the person so inoculated perfectly secure from the infection of
smallpox”!
Such was Jenner; such his inconsistency; and such the admissions he
was driven to make under stress of failures many and manifest.
SMALLPOX MADE MILDER.
As vaccination failed to afford the protection originally
guaranteed, various explanations were devised to enable those
who had talked too loftily to eat humble pie without painful
observation. One of the commonest excuses was that if vaccination
did not prevent smallpox it made it milder: and inasmuch as no one
knew, or could know, how severe any attack of smallpox would have
been _without_ vaccination, it was an assertion as indisputable
as the reverse--namely, that vaccination not only made smallpox
severer, but frequently induced the disease. There are many
assertions with which there is no reckoning, for it would require
omniscience to check them. Let us beware of such assertions. Let us
neither make them, nor suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by them.
PUNCTURES, ONE OR SEVERAL.
Another excuse was advanced in the report of the National Vaccine
Establishment in 1814. It was said the failures in vaccination
appeared to result from the practice Of making only one puncture
for the insertion of virus. One puncture ineffective! Why, if
one puncture were ineffective, how were the early miracles of
vaccination to be accounted for, all of which had been effected by
means of single punctures?
MR. RIGBY’S PROTEST.
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