Papers relating to the history and practice of vaccination.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers relating to the history and practice of vaccination. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    31/398 (page 13)
    \ And n0Wj jn hjg first publication, he announced what, for practical purposes, may be regarded as the fulfilment of that prediction. In a succession of cases he had conducted the lymph to a fifth generation from its source ; and the child vaccinated last in the series had been proved, by the test of variolous inoculation, to be no less safe against small-pox than another to whom had been given a first infection from the cow. Setting aside for the present the question whether this transmission of the vaccine influence from person to person can really and practically be “ continued in perpetuity,” it may be sufficient to observe, that (1) its transmissibility through at least many successive human bodies, and (2) that large multiplication of lymph which, by the production of new vesicles, occurs at each stage of such transmission, were established fully and solely by .Tenner’s researches. These are the all-important conditions, under which alone the discovered virtues of cow-pox could be useful for public protection. Jenner had now detailed twenty-three cases in which, by vaccination, accidental or experi- mental, the human system had been rendered, for periods ranging up to 53 years, insuscep- tible of small-pox inoculation. He had reasonably accounted to himself for the so-called excep- tions in the great pathological law which his cases illustrate ; exceptions only in appearance ; but which had precluded that law from early and general recognition. He had learned that not every eruption on the cow is the specific cow-pox ; and that—even from cow-pox—not all inoculation is protective. The disease might be mistaken, or the lymph be spoilt. He had cautioned persons who would repeat his experiments against these sources of fallacy, “lest the want of discrimination should occasion an idea of security which might prove delusive.” Barring such sources of fallacy, he asserted “ that the cow-pox protects the human constitution from the infection of small-poxand that, by an appropriate procedure-ff- henceforth to be named Vaccination-HHIus protective influence may be indefinitely commu- nicated and multiplied among mankind. These conclusions were at once accepted, as proven or probable, by persons of judgment and authority in the medical profession. Mr. Cline, then the great teacher of surgery at St. Thomas’s Hospital, was, at Jenner’s request, the first to verify them by experiment ; and early in 1799 Dr. Woodville, of the Small-pox Hospital, with the co-operation of Mr. Pearson, commenced a great series of public vaccinations in London. In these early days of the discovery, almost every case of vaccination was made a test of the alleged protection. Dr. Jenner, writing in 1801, says, “upwards of 6,000 persons have “ now been inoculated with the virus of cow-pox, and the far greater part of them have since “ been inoculated with that of small-pox, and exposed to its infection in every rational way “ that could be devised, without effect-,” and Dr. Woodville (giving public evidence in 1802) said that, within two years (1799-1801) there were vaccinated at the Small-pox Hospital 7,500 persons, of whom about one half were subsequently inoculated with small-pox matter, and in none of them did small-pox produce any effect. Other observers, too, had contributed numerous instances of persons who, having accidentally contracted infection from the cow, were found, many years afterwards, capable of resisting all attempts to infect them by inoculation of small-pox. ^ ^ These facts told their own story, and they tell it still. They were in themselves sufficient argument; for Jenner’s simple truthful style carried conviction. No one candidly studying Sources of fal- lacy to be guarded against. Vaccination. Its first per- formance in London.* Universal cor- roboration of Jenner’s state- ments. Conclusiveness of these facts; Loth in Roses Biographical Dictionary (art. Jenner) and in Gregory’s Lectures on the Eruptive Fevers (p. 187) I read that the first verification of Jenner’s discovery was made in St. Thomas’s Hospital.^ il;either in Mr. Cline’s private case-book, in which first vaccination is described, nor in Jenner’s notice of the experiment (op. cit. p. 128), can I find any mention of the glace where it was performed ; and the name of the patient (Richard Weller) is not to be found in theHSospitafJ£o£r&s of the period. /A S ri«. 3 Clj tfcyJ- S L , 7 tCivt- J b-v_<--tr n./ /