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
Dr. WOODVILLE, forgiving Jenner’s evil treatment, came, like a
good Friend, to bear witness to the new practice. He had learnt
to prefer vaccine to variolous inoculation at the Hospital. He
had, up to January, 1802, operated with cowpox on 7,500 patients.
About half of them had been subjected to the Variolous Test with
satisfactory results.
Dr. BRADLEY, physician to the Westminster Hospital, said he looked
on Jenner as the author of Vaccine Inoculation, and believed no
medical man doubted it. As accidental inoculation with cowpox was
proved to keep off smallpox for life, it was matter of course that
intentional inoculation would do so also. Not less than 2,000,000
of persons had received Vaccine Inoculation, and he had never known
an instance of any one dying of it. One in 300 died of smallpox
inoculation in England, and not less than one in 150 throughout
the rest of Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Had Jenner settled
in London he might have made £10,000 per annum for the first five
years, and double that sum afterwards.
Sir WALTER FARQUHAR, physician to the Prince of Wales, had told
Jenner that if he had come to London and kept his secret, he would
have ensured him £10,000 a year. He had however divulged his
secret and lost all chance of emolument. His remedy was a permanent
security against smallpox, and had never proved fatal; whilst
variolous inoculation, performed in the best manner, cost one life
in three hundred.
Mr. CLINE, surgeon to St. Thomas’s Hospital, corroborated the
opinion that Jenner could have earned £10,000 a year in London by
means of his secret. As smallpox was the most destructive of all
diseases, its suppression was the greatest discovery ever made in
the practice of physic.
Mr. JOHN GRIFFITHS, surgeon to the Queen’s Household and St.
George’s Hospital, had inoculated upwards of 1500 persons with
cowpox without any untoward symptoms.
Mr. JAMES SIMPSON, surgeon to the Surrey Dispensary, had inoculated
between fifty and sixty without any injury. Considered them
perfectly secure from smallpox. A child of nine months covered with
_crusta lactea_ resisted all the usual remedies, but on the tenth
day after he had inoculated it with cowpox, the crust began to
disappear, and the twelfth day was entirely gone.
Dr. JOSEPH MARSHALL related his experience as a vaccine inoculator
in the Navy and at Gibraltar, Malta, Palermo, Naples, Rome and
Genoa. Everywhere was successful. Believed he had operated on
10,000, and never witnessed any ill consequences whatever. On the
contrary, children in a weak state of health, after passing through
the vaccine infection, began to thrive and become vigorous.
Mr. JOHN ADDINGTON, surgeon, had used Jenner’s remedy since 1799
in eighty-one cases. One third of these he had inoculated with
smallpox, and subjected to every method of infection he could
devise, but found them perfectly proof against the disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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