222 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. xvra. 



Commons, on the Report of its Committee, and the evi- 

 dence of the leading physicians and surgeons of London 

 a large number of whom declared their belief that 

 cow-pox was a perfect security against small-pox voted 

 Jenner 10,000. When therefore the flood of evidence 

 poured in, showing that it did not protect, it was already 

 too late to remedy the mischief that had been done, since 

 the profession would not so soon acknowledge its mis- 

 take, nor would the legislature admit having hastily 

 voted away the public money without adequate reason. 

 The vaccinators went on vaccinating, the House of Com- 

 mons gave Jenner 20,000 more in 1807, endowed vac- 

 cination with 3000 a year in 1808, and after providing 

 for free vaccination in 1840, made the operation com- 

 pulsory in 1853 by a fine, and ordered the Guardians to 

 prosecute in 1867. 



Vaccination and the Medical Profession. 



Before proceeding to adduce the conclusive evidence 

 that now exists of the failure of vaccination, a few pre- 

 liminary misconceptions must be dealt with. One of 

 these is that, as vaccination is a surgical operation to 

 guard against a special disease, medical men can alone 

 judge of its value. But the fact is the very reverse, for 

 several reasons. In the first place, they are interested 

 parties, not merely in a pecuniary sense, but as affecting 

 the prestige of the whole profession. In no other case 

 should we allow interested persons to decide an important 

 matter. "Whether iron ships are safer than wooden ones 

 is not decided by ironmasters or by shipbuilders, but by 

 the experience of sailors and by the statistics of loss. In 



