Life of Dr. Jenner. 149 



and he remained there for three weeks after its appearance; 

 yet strange to say, with all his own eiSbrts and those of his 

 friends, he was unable, during that long period, to procure one 

 person in the metropolis on whom he could exhibit the vac- 

 cine disease. Mr. Cline's acknowledged reputation gave the 

 bent to the public mind, and before the year was expired, 

 vaccination had made rapid advances in general esteem. 



Mr. Chne and Sir Walter Farquhar now anxiously pressed 

 Dr. Jenner to settle as a physician in town, and it is cer- 

 tainly to be regretted that he did not act upon their advice. 

 Mucri of the evil which afterwards ensued, and some por- 

 tion of that professional jealousy which broke out and tar- 

 nished the rising glory of vaccination, would probably have 

 been checked, had Jenner been upon the spot. His presence 

 would have directed the public judgment, and nipped in 

 the bud the insidious designs of some who took a prominent 

 part in the extraordinary scene which presently displayed 

 itself. A rush towards vaccination succeeded to, and 

 strangely contrasted with, the apathy and distrust with 

 which it had hitherto been viewed. It was not only re- 

 commended, but practised, by persons of all ranks and 

 conditions, without any knowledge of what they were really 

 doing. That this was in some degree encouraged by the 

 confident tone of those, whose professional experience should 

 have taught them caution in all matters relating to the con- 

 jectural art of medicine, cannot indeed be denied. Even 

 Jenner himself is not free from this censure. Within two 

 years from the promulgation of his discovery, we find him 

 employing such strong expressions as these : *' The scep- 

 ticism that appeared even amongst the most enlightened of 

 medical men when my sentiments on the important subject 

 of the cow-pox were first promulgated, was highly laud- 

 able. To have admitted the truth of a doctrine at once so 

 novel and so unlike any thing that ever had appeared in the 

 annals of medicine, without the test of the most rigid scru- 

 tiny would have bordered on temerity ; but now when that 

 scrutiny has taken place, not only amongst ourselves, but 

 in the first professional circles in Europe, and when it has 

 been uniformly found, in such abundant instances, that the 

 human frame, when once it has felt the influence of the 

 genuine cow-pox in the way that has been described, is 

 never afterwards, at any 'period of its existence, assailable 

 by the small-pox, may I not with perfect confidence con- 

 gratulate my country and society at large, on their beholding, 

 in the mild form of the cow-pox, an antidote, that is ca- 



