The ample and public testimony offered in favour of Vaccination seemed for a while to set the question at rest; and, except in a few obscure pamphlets and communications to the medical journals, little was heard in opposition to it, till 1804, when Mr. Goldson of Portsmouth published six cases of Smallpox occurring after Vaccination, accompanied with observations, calculated to shake the confidence which was now very generally placed in the security of the Jennerian inoculation. These were answered by Mr. Ring and others, who endeavoured to show that, in some of his cases, Mr. Goldson’s patients had not had the genuine Cowpox in the first instance, and that in others, they had not had the genuine Smallpox thereafter. This part of the controversy was conducted with temper, and with a reasonable degree of candour. In the end of the same year however, Dr. Moseley published his treatise on the Cowpox, in which the ravings of Bedlam seemed to be blended with the tropes of Billingsgate. Dr. Rowley followed on the same side, and in the same temper, with 500 cases of “the beastly new diseases produced from Cowpox,” and attracted customers by two coloured engravings at the head of his work of “the Cowpoxed, ox-faced boy,” and the “Cowpoxed, mangey girl.” The battle now became general. The Reverend Rowland Hill thundered in defence of vaccination--Dr. Squirrel leaped from his cage upon the whole herd of vaccinators--Mr. Birch insisted upon stating his serious reasons for objecting to Cowpox--Drs. Thornton and Lettsom chanted pæans in its praise--Mr. Lipscomb strutted forward with a ponderous, wordy dissertation on its failures and mischiefs; and Messrs. Ring, Merriman, and Blair answered everybody; and exasperated all their opponents by their intemperance and personality. Charges of murder and falsehood were interchanged among the disputants without the smallest ceremony; the medical journals foamed with the violence of their contention; it raged in hospitals and sick-chambers; and polluted with its malignity the sanctity of the pulpit and the harmony of convivial philanthropy.