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
A few weeks after the award of £10,000 to Jenner by the House of
Commons, Dr. Pearson published _An Examination_ of the report of
the committee. He did not contest Jenner’s claim to consideration,
but the ground on which it was advanced, and on which it was
conceded; drawing attention to the manner in which the claims set
forth in Jenner’s petition had been reduced to “inoculation from
one human being to another,” whilst a new claim was invented for
him, “to wit, the mode of transferring, indefinitely, the vaccine
matter without any diminution of its specific power.”
What Pearson held, and rightly held, was, that the public
acceptance of the New Inoculation was due to Woodville and himself,
and not to Jenner--
The Cowpock Inoculation (after Dr. Jenner’s book was published
in June, 1798, which contained seven or eight cases, the whole
result of his experience) was not practised by any person that I
know of, till January, 1799, neither Dr. Jenner, nor any person
that I could find being in possession of matter; but, in January,
1799, in consequence of a general inquiry, which I had instituted
immediately after Jenner’s publication, information was given
of the Cowpock Disease breaking out in two Cow-stables near
London, and from these sources Dr. Woodville and myself collected
matter, by which, in the course of three months, 300 persons (not
fewer, I think) were inoculated for the Cowpock in addition to
the seven or eight cases of Dr. Jenner, then the whole stock of
facts of Inoculation before the public. Besides carrying on the
Inoculation ourselves in this manner, we disseminated the matter
throughout the country, in particular to Dr. Jenner himself; and
especially, I within that time issued a printed letter, directed
to upwards of two hundred practitioners in different parts of
the kingdom, containing thread impregnated with the Cowpock
matter.... By the close of 1799 about 4000 persons had been
inoculated by Dr. Woodville, myself, and our correspondents.
Pearson also claimed to have cleared away difficulties created by
Jenner’s statements, some of which were most prejudicial to the
public acceptance of the New Inoculation--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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