6 2 Proceedings of the Newport Natural History Society. 
In 1798 he published his first memoir upon the subject. 
It was his desire that it should appear through the Royal 
Society, as his paper upon the cuckoo had done. Curiously 
enough, however, it was declined. The fact shows, how¬ 
ever, not merely the general scepticism that prevailed re¬ 
garding the soundness of his views upon vaccination, for 
as has been shown, they were already known to the scien¬ 
tific circles of London, but also that he was still consid¬ 
ered, even among hi 3 friends, as naturalist rather than 
physician. “ He had already gained,’’ the President of 
the Society said to him, “some credit by his communi¬ 
cations to the Royal Society, and he ought to be cautious 
and prudent and not risk his reputation by presenting to 
that learned body anything which appeared so much in 
variance with established knowledge and withal so incredi¬ 
ble.” He then spent three months in London, but in all 
that time he could not procure a single person upon whom 
he could demonstrate the process. In 1799 more than 
seventy leading physicians and surgeons signed a declara¬ 
tion of entire cohfidence in vaccination. He was urged to 
remove permanently to London, but refused though guar¬ 
anteed an income of ^10,000, and only occasionally visited 
it. In 1800 he was requested by the Duke of York to 
vaccinate the 85th Regiment, at Colchester. Upon exami¬ 
nation, however, it was found that the whole regiment, 
including its women and children, was effected with the 
itch. It was necessary to wait until this was cured. This is 
but an example of his delays and vexations. The early 
reluctance to vaccination was sometimes overcome in a 
curious way. In one instance, churchwardens decided that 
the expense of coffins for small-pox patients was altogether 
too onerous, and they compelled a whole parish to submit 
to the gratuitous treatment that Jenner had offered. 
In 1801 Blumenbach of Gottingen, who as both natu¬ 
ralist and physician had followed Jenner’s two-fold career 
with the greater interest, wrote him as follows: “As a 
very warm friend and even teacher of Natural History, I 
