Dr. Rowley was a determined opponent of Vaccination, and obtained an unenviable notoriety by his association with Dr. Moseley in opposing every conceivable obstacle to the reception and progress of that invaluable discovery. The obstacles interposed were matters-of-fact, and as matters-of-fact were recognised and prevailed. The controversy that followed the introduction of Vaccination “gave birth,” says the Edinburgh reviewer, “to an infinite number of publications of all descriptions” from which he could only select the most characteristic. Among these we find Dr. Squirrel, whose book is described “as the most entertaining of the whole”-- We will venture to say, though we know it to be a bold assertion, that there never was anything so ill-written, or so vulgar and absurd, produced before by a person entitling himself a Doctor of Medicine. There is a certain nimbleness and agility about him, however, which keeps us in good humour, and he whisks about with such a self-satisfied springiness and activity, that it is really enlivening to look on him. Turning up Squirrel’s pamphlet[178] I find little or nothing to warrant this description. It is not ill-written, if judged by the standard of medical literature, and the “springiness” is a conceit of the reviewer’s to sport with the Doctor’s name. My own impression is that Squirrel was a dull fellow, jealous of cowpox as injurious to the trade in smallpox inoculation, and that he availed himself of the depression in the vaccination business to assert its superiority. He admits, indeed, that he kept silent during the Jennerian furore, “but the overwhelming torrent being gradually reduced to a feeble current,” he reckoned that he “might now promulgate his opinion with a reasonable hope of success.” He cites Jenner’s account of the origin of cowpox in the greasy heels of horses, and proceeds to argue that the disease is scrofula, which its inoculation is certain to diffuse, whilst affording no protection from smallpox. He then adduces a number of cases in proof that inoculated cowpox had not averted smallpox, and had in several instances brought on serious and fatal ailments. Jenner in a letter to Moore from Berkeley, 28th February, 1810, thus refers to Squirrel-- John Gale Jones, I see, has at length succeeded in obtaining the situation for which he has long been a candidate. This fellow had once the impudence to desire a man to call on me in Bedford Place to say, that he, Jones, would advise me immediately to quit London, for there was no knowing what an enraged populace might do. He was the writer of Squirrel’s book, the long anti-vaccine columns in the _Independent Whig_, and many of the most violent papers in the _Medical Observer_. I was held up in his Forum for several nights as an object of derision; but I silenced him by the same weapon as I have others--contempt.[179]