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the sensation from Russia is going to filter through to England, but unless you people in Gloucester are going to be swayed by the manifesto issued by the medical men my advice to you is to keep your rejoicings for the 5th of November, and then if you happen to be hard up for a companion for Guy Fawkes I would advise you to have an effigy of Edward Jenner to help feed the flames of your bonfire. (Laughter and cheers.)
Jenner inoculated this boy James Phipps in 1796. Then, as soon as he had done that, he wrote it down—(laughter)—and went round the neighbourhood collecting desultory information with regard to cow-pox and cow-poxed milkers. He got cases of those who had had cow-pox years before and had never bad small-pox, as if everybody was bound to have the small-pox. Then he took some worn-out paupers, over 60 years of age, who had had the cow-pox years and years before and inoculated them with small-pox to see if they would take. He found they did not take, because as people get advanced in life they are more or less proof against it. “This,” said Jenner, “is the grand proof of the value of inoculation of cow-pox as a preventive of small-pox.” These were the materials which he got together in order to present his paper to the Royal Society. It was not to be surprised at that, with miserable material such as this, the Royal Society, though at that time at so low an ebb scientifically, should, nevertheless, immediately reject his paper as unsatisfactory and unsuited to a scientific society or a healthy public. (Cheers.) Jenner took care in that paper never to mention the cases of people who had cow-pox and
HAD SMALL-POX AFTERWARDS.
He mentioned the cases of a dozen old men who had cow-pox and did not take small-pox afterwards, but he could have had hundreds of cases of people who had had both. These he took good care never to say anything about. As soon, however, as he came back with his paper the cow doctors were at him. They said this was all rubbish and began to pour on him hundreds of cases, just as we pelt the pro-vaccinists with figures showing that ninety percent. of those who have had small-pox have already been vaccinated. (Cheers.)
So Dr. Jenner soon found he would have to change his whistle, and invented a novel idea. The idea he started was this. He said there are two kinds of pox. One is the genuine kind and the other spurious, and those who have had cow-pox and yet had small-pox afterwards have had the spurious variety. Those who had cow-pox and did not have small-pox afterwards were those who have had the genuine disease. This was a very clever and specious kind of argument, and the next thing that Jenner had to do was to find out where the genuine cow-pox could be found. Accordingly, on going into a stable one day he found that a cow had been affected with a very peculiar kind of disease that was produced in this way. It seems that a man had been seeing to the grease upon a horse’s heels, and had gone to milk the cows without washing his hands. The result was that it produced that peculiar kind of disease known by the name of
