Edward Jenner as Naturalist. 
65 
urement. Partly, no doubt, it is but that retrogressive- 
swing of the pendulum which, through inscrutable but in¬ 
variable law, in all things follows, to a certain extent, every 
advance of civilization. In part, however, and such, I am 
told, has been the case in Rhode Island, the regrettable 
agitation against vaccination has been led by persons who 
have lost by death, and through one of the causes that I 
have already mentioned — either latent disease of a consti¬ 
tutional character, or carelessness in preparing the virus, 
• which is now done by wholesale at so-called vaccine farms 
— a member of their family. To these we must pardon much. 
In their grief they cannot appreciate that a sequence is by 
no means always a consequence, and that “after” does 
not necessarily signify “because of.” In condemning the 
transfer from the cow which has made mankind so much 
healthier and happier, one might as well insist that all milk, 
the natural food of childhood, should be disused because 
where reasonable care and precautions in its collection have 
been neglected disaster has followed. 
What might happen even with us in Rhode Island, 
were the advocates of evil to have their way, is at this 
moment being shown in England. Berkeley, Jenner’s birth¬ 
place, is very near to the city of Gloucester. In the west 
nave of Gloucester Cathedral stands a marble statute of 
Jenner. A prophet is not often honored in his own coun¬ 
try. He whom the whole world delights to place on high 
has usually been thought little of, if not derided, at home. 
It has been so with Newport and Col. Waring.* In Glou¬ 
cester there have long been, probably from the beginning, 
persons who disbelieved in the protective power of vacci¬ 
nation. They have been able to prevent its being carried 
out bv the authorities, and as a direct consequence the city 
is now being decimated by small-pox in its very worst 
form. The ingress of strangers and the egress of citizens 
prevented — too many dead for funerals — disfigurement of 
•Col George E Waring, Jr., the most prominent, perhaps, of American Sanita¬ 
rians, was for many years a resident of Newport. 
