The debate, it will be observed, was conducted in a House of 107 members at a late period of the session, and the variations among the speakers consisted in degrees of extravagance and credulity. The fabulous matter as to Jenner personally affords curious evidence of the manner in which legends originate in the presence of contemporaries, and how they come to be repeated with the fervour of good faith by men whose competence and honesty might be taken for unimpeachable. Jenner’s party had whipped up their adherents, and the issue was sedulously arranged for; but because they had their way it need not be assumed that it was necessary to circumvent any active adversaries. Apathy was their chief difficulty. There was little to be got out of cowpox by the ordinary politician; and then, as now, the average M.P. rarely committed himself to any project that did not obviously make for his popularity. As for the enthusiasm for Vaccination displayed by the speakers in the House, we have to recollect that they were not converts to the practice _per se_. No really new discovery was ever received with such an instant chorus of approbation by the mob, educated or uneducated. They were one and all bred under the severe and dangerous practice of Variolous Inoculation, whereof Vaccination was no more than a modification with a seductive promise of equal or greater security from smallpox, and exemption from its perils and annoyances. Unless this prepossession be allowed for, the conduct of Parliament toward Jenner cannot be rightly understood. There was not a word uttered against Vaccination from the ground which physiologists at this day occupy, for that ground, in a scientific sense, was as yet unknown. Smallpox was a mysterious visitation to be mysteriously dealt with--dodged, if possible, by medical artifice; and not, as we are persuaded, a crisis of impurity in the blood induced by foul conditions of life, which cannot be better disposed of than in the course of nature by eruptive fever. If we could suppress smallpox (in any other way than by the removal of its causes) we should merely alter its manifestation and have to accept it in some other and aggravated form of disease. CHAPTER XVII. VACCINATION ESTABLISHED AND ENDOWED. Jenner provided for, his adherents had yet another end to achieve, namely, their own release from the burden of the Royal Jennerian Society, paralysed by the secession of Dr. Walker and the Friends and the establishment of the London Vaccine Institution. At first they had endeavoured to discredit the new Institution, even to the extent of distributing hand-bills like the following in the streets-- A CAUTION. To persons desirous of obtaining INOCULATION for the Cowpox Gratis under the sanction of THE ROYAL JENNERIAN SOCIETY.