In the whole course of our censorial labours, we have never had occasion to contemplate a scene so disgusting and humiliating as is presented by the greater part of this controversy; nor do we believe that the virulence of political animosity or personal rivalry or revenge ever gave rise, among the lowest and most prostituted scribblers, to so much coarseness, illiberality, violence and absurdity as is here exhibited by gentlemen of sense and education discussing a point of professional science with a view to the good of mankind. At one time, indeed, we were so overpowered and confounded by the clamour and vehement contradictions of the combatants, that we were tempted to abandon the task we had undertaken, and leave it to some more athletic critic to collect the few facts and the little reasoning which could be discerned in this tempest of the medical world. Furious was the controversy, but why was it furious? There are often great fights over little matters, but the reason is that the little matters are vitally related to the self-love of the combatants; and thus it was with the Cowpoxers and the Smallpoxers. The Cowpoxers set out with the absolute assertion that whoever submitted to their prescription would be secure from smallpox for life. Without proof, or with powerful sham proof, the assertion was endorsed by the mass of the medical profession, and there followed the conversion of the community in that sort of faith-panic which is described by Carlyle as Swarmery-- All the world assenting, and continually repeating and reverberating, there soon comes that singular phenomenon called Swarmery, or the gathering of men in swarms; and what prodigies they are in the habit of doing and believing when thrown into that miraculous condition! Singular, in the case of human swarms, with what perfection of unanimity and quasi-religious conviction the stupidest absurdities can be received as axioms of Euclid, nay, as articles of faith, which you are not only to believe, unless malignantly insane, but are (if you have any honour or morality) to push into practice, and, without delay see _done_, if your soul would live.[169]