[158] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. ii. p. 456. [159] _Lancet_, 29th May, 1880, p. 834. CHAPTER XIX. JOHN BIRCH. It is part of the Jennerian legend that the introduction of vaccination was resisted by prejudice, fury and fanaticism, and that the practice made its way by sheer force of its proven efficacy. The statement is widely at variance with facts. Vaccination was accepted with instant acclamation by the medical profession, the royal family, and the public as an infallible and harmless preventive of smallpox; and the subsequent course of experience was to disprove alike its harmlessness and infallibility. That in some cases vaccination was encountered with absurdity and violence lay in the nature of things, even as it was advocated with absurdity, violence and prevarication. It is always easy to raise a laugh by the exhibition of the extravagance of either side in a hot dispute, but to what purpose? It would have been no cause for surprise if some had been moved to scorn by the facile credulity with which Jenner’s magical prescription was so rashly accepted, but the world to which he appealed had no scientific acquaintance with the laws of health, and it was in nowise marvellous that, convinced of the prophylaxy of inoculated smallpox, they should have been overcome by the plausibility of inoculated cowpox. Yet were not all overcome, nor were all who resisted the popular craze furious. There was John Birch, for example, surgeon to St. Thomas’s Hospital, who with calmness and cogency steadily protested against the introduction of “the new disease styled cowpox;” and we may read his letters and pamphlets and fail to note a fiery epithet or unkindly imputation. People who talk as if all who opposed Jenner were steeped in ignorance and perversity can know nothing of John Birch.