Jenner recognised Birch as a dangerous antagonist, and behaved toward him with his usual meanness. Writing from Berkeley, 11th October, 1812, to Moore in London, where smallpox was prevalent, he observed-- I have not heard lately whether the fury of the Smallpox is abated in town. I trust it is. Had I power to exercise vaccination as I liked, in one fortnight this dismal work of death should entirely cease. What a sad wicked fellow is that Birch! Moseley I hear nothing of now, but Birch is still employing his agents to spread the pestilence.[163] Birch a sad wicked fellow employing agents to spread pestilence in London, whilst the good Jenner, capable of arresting the dismal work of death, sat impotent at Berkeley! Comment is superfluous. Quack, malicious and impudent, is written at large. FOOTNOTES: [160] _Life of Jenner_, vol. i. p. 541. [161] _A Practical Treatise on the Management and Diseases of Children._ By Richard T. Evanson, M.D., and Henry Maunsell, M.D., Professors in the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland. Dublin, 1838. [162] _An Appeal to the Public on the Hazard and Peril of Vaccination, otherwise Cowpox, by the late_ JOHN BIRCH, ESQ., _together with his Serious Reasons for uniformly objecting to Vaccination: and other Tracts by the same Author._ 3rd Edition. London, 1817. [163] Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, vol. ii., p. 382. CHAPTER XX. GOLDSON AND BROWN. William Goldson, member of the London College of Surgeons, practising at Portsea, published a pamphlet in 1804[164] wherein he set forth a number of instances within his own experience of smallpox following vaccination by infection or inoculation. He did not turn against vaccination, but suggested that its prophylaxy might neither be so certain nor so enduring as at first asserted. Vaccination, he pointed out, had been carried into practice on a wave of enthusiasm, and it was not unreasonable to expect that on closer acquaintance some of the claims made for it should be subject to modification. Indeed so much was already admitted; for failures had led to the discrimination of spurious from genuine cowpox, and to the issue of new instructions as to the period of taking vaccine, “on which point, it was now said, depended the whole success of the operation.” Thus what was originally set forth as an operation for which any novice was competent, had developed into one of considerable delicacy with serious liability to miscarriage. Goldson, therefore, had fair reason to believe that his own observations and suggestions would meet with candid consideration, and, if verified, serve for general guidance in the practice of vaccination.