There were many circumstances connected with the discovery of Dr. Jenner which were of a nature to excite repugnance and opposition.  The practice of inoculation for the small-pox had already disarmed that disease of many of its terrors.  The introduction of a contagious disease from a brute creature into the human system naturally struck the public mind with a sensation of disgust and apprehension, and a part of the medical public may have shared these feelings.  I find that Jenner’s discovery of vaccination was made public in June, 1798.  In July of the same year the celebrated surgeon, Mr. Cline, vaccinated a child with virus received from Dr. Jenner, and in communicating the success of this experiment, he mentions that Dr. Lister, formerly of the Small-Pox Hospital, and himself, are convinced of the efficacy of the cow-pox.  In November of the same year, Dr. Pearson published his “Inquiry,” containing the testimony of numerous practitioners in different parts of the kingdom, to the efficacy of the practice.  Dr. Haygarth, who was so conspicuous in exposing the follies of Perkinism, was among the very earliest to express his opinion in favor of vaccination.  In 1801, Dr. Lettsom mentions the circumstance “as being to the honor of the medical professors, that they have very generally encouraged this salutary practice, although it is certainly calculated to lessen their pecuniary advantages by its tendency to extirpate a fertile source of professional practice.”

In the same year the Medical Committee of Paris spoke of vaccination in a public letter, as “the most brilliant and most important discovery of the eighteenth century.”  The Directors of a Society for the Extermination of the Small-Pox, in a Report dated October 1st, 1807, “congratulate the public on the very favorable opinion which the Royal College of Physicians of London, after a most minute and laborious investigation made by the command of his Majesty, have a second time expressed on the subject of vaccination, in their Report laid before the House of Commons, in the last session of Parliament; in consequence of which the sum of twenty thousand pounds was voted to Dr. Jenner, as a remuneration for his discovery, in addition to ten thousand pounds before granted.” (In June, 1802.)

These and similar accusations, so often brought up against the Medical Profession, are only one mode in which is manifested a spirit of opposition not merely to medical science, but to all science, and to all sound knowledge.  It is a spirit which neither understands itself nor the object at which it is aiming.  It gropes among the loose records of the past, and the floating fables of the moment, to glean a few truths or falsehoods tending to prove, if they prove anything, that the persons who have passed their lives in the study of a branch of knowledge the very essence of which must always consist in long and accurate observation, are less competent to judge of new doctrines in their own department than the rest of the community.  It belongs to the clown in society, the destructive in politics, and the rogue in practice.