Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion

Excerpts from Chapter 1 of Vaccine Science Revisited: Are Childhood Immunizations As Safe As Claimed?:


Force of nature

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.” –Yann Martel, (Life of PiLife of Pi)


On June 27th, 1833, a 21-year-old man suffered from severe head and back pain. One day later, he was still in great pain and red spots covered his body and face. Smallpox.

By morning, Surgeon Henry George had come to see him. The surgeon wrote in his notebook:

“His mind was wandering; his limbs and voice tremulous; his tongue dry, and covered with a brownish-red crust [. . .].”

The man’s face was completely swollen from pustules. Surgeon George fed him beef-tea and arrow-root and gave him medication. This helped the young man sleep for a few hours during the night.

The morning after, the swelling was worse and the pustules had merged together and blanketed his face. By July 1st, five days after the illness started, his entire body had turned a bluish-gray color. The pustules covering his body were completely confluent. Calamine, which was often used to reduce smallpox scarring, was applied to his body.

His seizures were so intense that it took five people to hold him down. The seizures continued throughout his illness. By July 9th, nearly two weeks since he became sick, Surgeon George described the young man as:

“[…] the most horrid spectacle that can be imagined; lies, and while lying,
trembles from head to foot; his countenance suspiciously wild, and expressive of the darkest intentions; [...].”

From other accounts of what smallpox does to a person, we can assume the pain was unbearable. Infected skin cells shedding as the virus struggled for survival. With the skin peeling off, the virus escaped to re-enter the body via such means as saliva. Once in the saliva, the germ infected the digestive system, giving it access to all organs.

The pustules grew to the size of boils, and any physical touch excruciating. The slightest movement would have felt like the skin being torn off. Still, through all this, the young man stayed fully alert.

Surgeon George continued to explain how a couple of days later, the outer layer of skin had completely detached itself from the rest of his face. Although the surgeon did not describe his patient being any pain, we cannot help but wonder how painful the separation of skin from his face must have been. The nerves would have been exposed without a layer of protection.

Surgeon George described infections under both big toes and in one of the heels. The infections oozed a rancid bloody discharge. The smell, he described as “dreadful”.

Three weeks later, on August 30th, the surgeon notes that his patient had:

“[…] violent flushing of the face; he is now pale, cold, a degree of stupor hanging over him; very dilated pupil; cannot tell the hour, and seems unconscious of your presence [. . .] he does not now walk erect; in moving, his motions are very hurried, and his body considerably bent.”

The surgeon continues to treat him with medication and wine. His last notes end on September 2nd with the patient more pleasant and reading the newspaper. The illness had consumed two full months of his life. He had survived the smallpox attack. He would live the rest of his life with major scarring to his face and body.

Stories of severe illnesses are not uncommon throughout our human history. Neither are the stories of humans’ innate desire for survival. We fight to prevent diseases and we fight to heal in the aftermath.

Desperate measures have been the groundwork for development of various techniques to ward off and to treat diseases. Even before our understanding of pathogens, or disease-causing germs, we were hard at work battling them. Often alchemy and superstitious practices became the main focus.

One such technique was described by a Chinese talisman, referred to in the book Chu yu shih-san kho , on how to exorcize the smallpox out of a child:

“[…] write the magic character on paper with red cinnabar ink, burn it to ashes, and have the child take them in liquid.”

Later on, these practices became more medicine-oriented. An example of such a source that explains various variolation, or inoculation techniques is I tsung chin chien (The Golden Mirror of Medicine). This is a collection of all available treatises, gathered together in 1739 by the Imperial College of Physicians in Peking. This collection contained four ways to prevent smallpox – as listed here:

“Aqueous inoculum method (shui miao fa). Allow a moistened plug of cotton-wool to imbibe an aqueous extract of a number of pulverised scabs (chia), and insert it into a nostril of the child to be inoculated.

“Dry inoculum method (han miao fa). Use slowly dried scabs, grind them into a fine powder, and blow it into the child’s nostrils by a suitable tube of silver.

“Smallpox-garment method (tou i fa). Wrap the child or the patient in a garment which has been worn by a smallpox sufferer during the illness.

“Smallpox lymph method (tou chiang fa). Impregnate a plug of cotton-wool with lymph from the perfectly matured pustules of a smallpox patient, and insert this into the nostril of the child to be inoculated.”

The Chinese knew how virulent the virus being used for the inoculum was. This was very important as it dictated its safety and efficacy. A man by the name of Yü Thien-chhih explained how inoculates were only collected from patients with mild symptoms. They collected only from patients who had a mild strain of the virus. Any other more virulent or epidemic-type strains were considered too dangerous to use and would kill people, rather than immunize them.

In addition to the potency factor of various strains, Yü Thien-chhih mentions a monetary benefit to inoculation in a collection called Sha tou chi chieh from 1727:

“[. . .] you have to pay two or three pieces of gold for enough to inoculate one person. Physicians who want to make some profit pass it through the children of their own relatives. [. . .] Others eager for money steal away the scabs from [severe] smallpox cases and use the material directly. It is called pai miao (ruined inoculum). In such cases there will be 15 deaths in 100 patients.”

Tibetans have been performing inoculations since ancient times as well. Their method was to dip multiple needles into a solution containing the virus and dried crusts. Using the dipped needles, they would prick the arm of the individual being immunized.


Needle-pricks around the world

Inoculations seemed to be happening across borders worldwide. Turkey was known for its success with inoculations. While staying in Turkey’s (then) capital Constantinople, in December, 1713, the renowned Fellow of London’s Royal Society, Mr. Emanuel Timonius, wrote a letter about this practice and how smallpox inoculations have already been in use for 40 years in Turkey.

During these inoculations, not a single person had died. In his letter, Mr. Timonius describes the procedure:

“[…] Needle prick the Tubercles […] press out the Matter coming from them into some convenient vessel of Glass [. . .] wash and clean the Vessel first with warm Water: A convenient quantity of this Matter being thus collected, is to be Stop’d close, and kept warm in the Bosom of the Person that carries it, and, as Soon as may be, brought to the place of expecting future Patient.”

He continued explaining that after the patient received the inoculant:

“[…] the Operator is to make several little Wounds with a Needle, in one, two or more places of the Skin, till some drops of Blood follow, and immediately drop out some drops of the Matter in the Glass, and mix it well with the Blood issuing out [. . .].”

In 1717, while residing in Turkey, Lady Mary Wortley, an English aristocrat, writer and wife of the British ambassador in Turkey, wrote letters encouraging the methods to be used in England. She had herself been sick with smallpox, and it left her face quite scarred. She didn’t want that for her five-year-old son, and requested Charles Maitland, the embassy surgeon at the time, to inoculate him.

When they returned to England, Maitland received a royal license to conduct an experiment on death row prisoners. So, in 1721, Charles Maitland, Dr. Richard Mead, Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. John George Steigerthal performed an experiment at Newgate Prison in London.

After the prisoners were inoculated, they were sent to Hertford. There was a smallpox epidemic there at the time. None of the prisoners got sick with smallpox. All the prisoners in the experiment survived and were excused of their crimes in return for participating in the experiment.

Princess Caroline of Great Britain was not quite ready to inoculate her own children, even after the successful experimentation on the prisoners. In order to confirm its success, she had six orphans inoculated. None of the orphans became sick with smallpox when exposed. The princess now felt comfortable enough to inoculate her own children.

References for Chapter 1: Force of nature:

Google. (2018, December 16). Henry George Surgeon, Surgeon Extraordinaire to H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&a...
Henry, George. (1833). A Compendious History of Small-pox (pp. 103-104). London: Idotson and Palmer, Churchill.
Ibid. (p. 107).
Ibid. (p. 112).
“The thirteen departments of apotropaic medicine”, which was written sometime after 1456 AD. This is not the oldest source of variolation. The first account of variolation mentioned, is rumored to be in Ishino, which is a collection of Chinese medical sources from 982 AD.
Needham, J., Gwei-Djen, L. and Sivin, N. (2004). Science and Civilisation in China, Vol 6-6 Biology and Biological Technology Medicine (p. 160). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press,
Ibid. (pp. 141-142).
According to Joseph Needham In Science and Civilsation in China, Vol 6-6 Biology and Biological Technology Medicine Yu was also “called the ‘strange man’ “who brought the inoculation procedure to Ning-kuo prefecture an alchemical adept.” See footnote p. 154.
Needham, J., Gwei-Djen, L. and Sivin, N. (2004). Science and Civilisation in China, Vol 6-6 Biology and Biological Technology Medicine (p. 134). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 134.
Timonius, E. and Woodward, J. (1753). An Account, or History, of the Procuring the Small Pox by Incision, or Inoculation; As it Has for Some Time Been Practised at Constantinople, Philosophical Transactions (Vol. 29., No. 339., p. 73). England: Royal Society of London
Ibid.
Prisoners on death row. They received an offer from the queen that whoever took part in the experiment would be pardoned. All six prisoners in the experiment willingly agreed to take part in it. They all survived and as promised, were released after experiment was over.
Johnson, Ben. (n.d.). Newgate Prison Wall. Retrieved from https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMa...
Behbehani, A.M. (1983). The Smallpox Story: Life and Death of an Old Disease. Microbiological Reiews, 47(4), 462.
Creighton, C. (1894). A History of Epidemics in Britain. Vol II From the Extinction of Plague to the present time (p. 519). London: C.J. Clay, M.A and Sons, Cambridge University Press Warehouse.

Excerpts from Chapter 2 of Vaccine Science Revisited: Are Childhood Immunizations As Safe As Claimed?:


From magic to medicine

“Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.” – Paracelcus (alchemist and physician).


In Britain, The Royal Society of Medicine was interested in the various inoculation techniques used around the world. With a desire to educate themselves and put into practice efficient and safe inoculation methods, its members studied the methods used by other cultures. The society recorded their observations in an article:

“In India, before variolation, the subject to be inoculated had to undergo a strict dietetic régime and after the operation, which was performed upon the upper arm by placing wool dipped in smallpox secretion on a scratched surface, the patient had to live in the open, away from people, and on a light diet.”

The Royal Society’s members continued describing what they had learned about the methods the Chinese used and also the then-Siamese:

“In China, we are told, the inoculum consisted of smallpox crusts mixed with musk and rolled into a pledget of wool which was inserted into the nose, while in Siam the dried infective material was simply insufflated.”

Insufflate, incidentally, means to breathe or blow vapor, air or a powdered medicine through or into a body cavity.

The genuine interest the scientific community of the day had in people’s health is no better demonstrated than in the Royal Society of Medicine’s obvious desire to discover the different inoculation methods already in use around the world. Its members pointed out that in India, the post dietary plan was used “to reduce the intensity of the smallpox reaction” . This coincided with scientific data the society had which confirmed a correlation between diet and viral concentration.

As for the Chinese method, the guess was that the “musk containing essential oil” was used to inhibit viral growth.

Russia, which had suffered greatly by the hands of smallpox, also seemed eager to learn from other cultures. In 1689, they sent students to China to learn about smallpox inoculation.
Interestingly, though, when the Russian imperial family wanted to be inoculated, they did not turn to the Chinese. They asked Dr. Thomas Dimsdale, a Western doctor, to do it.

As a further example of their keen interest in various methods the Royal Society of London published papers on the Chinese method in 1700, and in 1714 and 1716 on the Turkish method.

Unfortunately, even though smallpox was rampaging, Britain’s physicians held on to traditions and were slow to act on these alternative methods. The French were not on board with this inoculation process, either. They didn’t practice it until it was pointed out to them that it could have saved them almost one million lives already.


Epidemics

Epidemics were frequent and people all over the world were frightened by them. In the 1545 smallpox epidemic in Goa, India, almost 8,000 children died. Entire villages were wiped out in the 1625 smallpox epidemic in North America. Another historical epidemic was the Massachusetts Colonial epidemic in 1633 where Governor William Bradford stated that an indian village by the Connecticut River with 1,000 inhabitants became devoured with the smallpox virus, in so much that 950 of them died.

In 1634, the governor of Massachusetts, John Wintrop, wrote to Sir Nathaniel Rich:

“For the natives, they are neere all dead of the small Poxe, so as the Lord hathe cleared our title to what we possess” .

As tragic as this was, it was not considered a tragedy by all. One of those individuals was Reverend Increase Mather , who in 1632 saw the smallpox as a great blessing:

“About the same Time the Indians began to be quarrelsome touching the Bounds of the Land which they had sold to the English; but God ended the Controversy by sending the Small-pox amongst the Indians at Saugust, who were before that Time exceeding numerous. Whole Towns of them were swept away, in some of them not so much as one Soul escaping the Destruction.”

Another smallpox plague in 1679 called the Indian Plague, took countless souls. In the words of Count de Frontenac Louis de Buade:

“The Small Pox desolates them to such a degree that they think no longer of Meeting nor of Wars, but only of bewailing the dead, of whom there is already an immense number.”


The Western way

With smallpox ravaging the world, the desperation for a cure was understandable. By the early 18th Century, variolation was the most logical choice for prevention. It had become a common practice in the Western Hemisphere by 1721, but not without opposition.

Boston physician, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, was a believer in the practice and performed experiments which in some instances ended in death. This caused uproar and people actively opposed the practice of variolation. Multiple pamphlets were written by both those for and against it.

In July, 1721, physicians and surgeons gathered together for a meeting. Together with His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace and Select-Men, they decided against inoculation. Dr. Boylston was not pleased with their decision.

Their reasoning for taking a stand against inoculation, was as follows:

“IT appears by numerous Instances, That it has prov'd the Death of many Persons soon after the Operation, and brought Distempers upon many others which have in the End prov’d deadly to 'em.

“That the natural tendency of infusing such malignant Filth in the Mass of Blood, is to corrupt and putrify it, & if there be not a sufficient Discharge of that Malignity by the Place of Incision, or elsewhere, it lays a Foundation for many dangerous Diseases.

“That the Operation tends to spread and continue the Infection in a Place longer than it might otherwise be.

“That the continuing the Operation among us is likely to prove of most dangerous Consequence.”

The inoculation process was considered so dangerous that it wasn’t legalized until after the aforementioned experiment on prisoners at Newgate in August 1721.

After this, when the inoculation process didn’t go as planned, the inoculators would often push the blame away from themselves. Instead, they blamed the deaths on causes unrelated to the inoculation. This didn’t sit well with those who opposed inoculations. Many doctors and clergy men ended up opposing the practice, and “[i]n 1722, an anonymous pamphlet appeared, which described inoculation as the outcome of atheism, quackery, and avarice.”

Dr. Wagstaffe, who worked as a doctor at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital expressed his concerns regarding inoculations. These concerns are reminiscent of today’s concerns regarding population control:

“Thus, the Operator has it in his power to convey the Small Pox to distant Places and Persons, who neither avow his practice or desire his experiment: And if ‘tis possible that ingrafted Pox can be so poysonous as to communicate certain death to all around by this method, they may ingraft as violent a Plague as has been known among us. How far the Legislature may think fit to interpose, in order to prevent such an artificial way of depopulating a Country, is not my Province to determine. ”


The Boston inoculation party

Around the same time, a ship from the West Indies sailed into Boston harbor. Unbeknown to the passengers and Boston residents, she carried with her the smallpox virus. In Boston at this time, Reverend Cotton Mather (son of Rev. Increase Mather) was considered to have played an important role in the eradication of smallpox.

Rev. Mather had urged all of the physicians in the area to help inoculate the Bostonians. A physician answering his call was a Dr. Boylston. Together, they started inoculating the willing Bostoners.

The medical community in Boston was not pleased. It felt the inoculation would only spread the disease and not limit it. These inoculation-opposing physicians argued that Man shouldn’t mingle in the Lord’s affairs. This practice was so upsetting to the physicians, that they fought a legal battle against Dr. Boylston for “intentionally exposing citizens to a potentially fatal disease”.

(Ironically, later on, many of these physicians published papers in favor of inoculation. The only thing that seemed to have changed, was that this time they had a financial gain in doing so).

A closer look at Rev. Mather reveals his earlier opinions were perhaps not far off from his medical opponents’. In fact, in his diary, we find passages about sins being the cause of illnesses:

“There are it may be Two Thousand Sicknesses: and indeed, any one of them able to crush us! But what is the Cause of all? Bear in Mind, That Sin was that which first brought Sickness upon a Sinful World, and which yett continues to sicken the World, with a World of Diseases.”

Rev. Mather continues to preach about sickness being the result of the Original Sin when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. In other words, when we become sick, it is only a product of our sins.

He continues:

“Fools, because of their Transgression, and because of their Iniquities, are afflicted, with Sickness. Indeed Sin sometimes is Naturally the Cause of Sickness. A Sickness in the Spirit will naturally cause a Sickness in the Body.”

When the news of smallpox outbreaks reached Rev. Mather, he saw it as a new disease brought upon us by God:

“It is one of those new Scourges whereof there are several, which the Holy and Righteous God has inflicted on a sinful World.”

The authors of a study into Rev. Mather’s diary entries, one of which is called The Angel, has a passage regarding childbirth. The authors share their interpretation of his words in dismay:

“Those in pain should remember that they are suffering for their sins, just as Christ suffered on the cross for the sins of all mankind. (In the chapter on childbirth, seventeen out of twenty-one pages are devoted to moralizing of this sort.) And the proper thoughts for smallpox victims are those of self-abhorrence and self-abasement: such creatures are to be viewed as loathsome.”

Could Rev. Mather’s change from persecuting the sick as sinners to saving people from sickness have something to do with the fact that, in 1713, three of Mather’s children, his wife and maid were killed by measles ?

References for Chapter 2: From magic to medicine:

Ledingham, J.C.G. (1935). The Comparative Study of Clinically Allied Viruses: Some unsolved Problems of Edward Jenner. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 29(2), 73-74.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Griffiths, J. (1984). Doctor Thomas Dimsdale, and Smallpox in Russia. Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Journal, January. Retrieved from https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcre...
Fenner, F., Henderson, D.A., Arita., Jezek, Z., and Ladnyi, I.D. (1988). Smallpox and its Eradication (Table 6.1, p. 247). Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.
Winthrop, A., Winthrop, J.,Winthrop F. and Winthrop W. (1628). Winthrop Papers (p. 167). Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society.
Harvard University. (n.d.). Increase Mather. Retrieved from https://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard...
Mather, I. (1864). Early History of New England (pp. 110-111). Boston: Samuel G. Drake; and Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell.
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. (n.d.). The History of Vaccines. Retrieved from https://www.historyofvaccines.org/con...
Boylston, Z. (1726). An Historical Account of the Small-pox Inoculated in New England (p. 53). London: Printed for S. CHANDLER, at the Cross-Keys in the Poultry. Edwards & Broughton.
Crookshank, E. (1889). History and Pathology of Vaccination, Vol I (p. 39). London: H.K Lewis.
Ibid. (p. 39-40).
Gross, C.P. and Sepkowitz, K.A. (1998). The Myth of the Medical Breakthrough: Smallpox, Vaccination, and Jenner Reconsidered. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 57.
Beall, O., Shryock, R. (1968). Cotton Mather: First Significant Figure in American Medicine (p. 171). Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press.
Ibid. (p. 172).
Ibid. (p. 200).
Ibid. (pp. 114-115).
Hostetter, M.K. (2012). What We Don’t See. N Engl J Med, 366, 1328-1334.

Excerpts from Chapter 3 of Vaccine Science Revisited: Are Childhood Immunizations As Safe As Claimed?


The medicine man

“To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.” – William Osler.


In 1772, Englishman Edward Jenner had served as an apprentice to two surgeons for nine years. After his apprenticeships he “established himself as the local practitioner and surgeon.”

His credentials would be harshly criticized by his future opponents. One such opponent was the renowned Dr. Walter Hadwen. He may have been known for his anti-vaccine views, but he also had a degree in Surgery and Midwifery. He had also received multiple trophies such as:

“First Prizeman in Physiology, Operative Surgery, Pathology and Forensic Medicine, and also that of Suple Prizeman and double Gold Medallist in Surgery and Medicine.”

In an 1896 address, during a smallpox epidemic in Gloucester, Dr. Hadwen demeaned Jenner’s qualifications by saying:

“Jenner looked upon the whole thing as a superfluity, and he hung up ‘Surgeon, apothecary,’ over his door without any of the qualifications that warranted the assumption.”

Dr. Hawden explained how Jenner received his degree of Doctor of Medicine from the Scotch University simply by paying them £15.

He then further attacks Jenner’s character by stating that Dr. Norman Moore, who was Jenner’s biographer, admitted that,

“[…] it was obtained by little less than a fraud. It was obtained by writing a most extraordinary paper about a fabulous cuckoo , for the most part composed of arrant absurdities and imaginative freaks such as no ornithologist of the present day would pay the slightest heed to.”

As if this wasn’t enough, he continued on about Jenner’s relentless attempts to acquire further degrees without any education:

“Jenner communicated with the University of Oxford and asked them to grant him their honorary degree of M.D., and after a good many fruitless attempts he got it. Then he sent to the Royal College of Physicians in London to get their diploma, [. . .]. [. . .] they considered he had quite enough on the cheap already, and told him distinctly that until he passed the usual examinations they were not going to give him any more.”

Edward Jenner never took any examinations and therefore never achieved a diploma as a physician.

Jenner is mostly recognized for his work on developing a smallpox vaccine. The story began in 1774 when rumors from rural people about cowpox preventing smallpox could be heard. This hypothesis had no scientific basis, it was merely a word of mouth storytelling. Jenner decided to test this theory by making a cut in the arm of a neighbor’s eight-year-old son James Phipps. He then rubbed cowpox matter from a milkmaid’s hand into it.

After two months, he made more incisions in both of James’ arms and covered the cuts with smallpox pus from an infected person. The records say the boy did not contract smallpox. What we don’t know, because it has never been noted in any reports, is whether the boy had previous exposure to smallpox.

After 23 experiments, Jenner concluded that the cowpox matter gave humans immunity against the smallpox virus. He sent his discovery to the Royal Society, but they rejected his paper. He took it upon himself to publish the information in a brochure titled An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae , a Disease discovered in some of the Western Counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of Cow Pox.

This was the first time cowpox was referred to as Variolae Vaccinae, a term that Jenner conjured up. This new name was not mentioned anywhere else in the brochure.

Often when scholars or other medical professionals read scientific brochures, pamphlets or papers, they will only read the heading and the abstract. It’s therefore not surprising that the phrase stuck. Many of them would have assumed this was the proper scientific name for cowpox.

In 1798, as Jenner continued his experimentations, he took samples from the sore of a stableman. He had become infected when cleaning grease from the hooves of a horse. Jenner used a sample from the stableman’s infection to inoculate the five-year-old John Baker.

Unfortunately, Jenner was not known for his detailed note-taking and only briefly described his observation of his experiment with John Baker, without any explanations, leaving the reviewers no knowledge of the experimental process. All he wrote was:

“He became ill on the 6th day with symptoms similar to those excited by Cow-Pox matter. On the 8th day he was free from indisposition […] the boy was rendered unfit for inoculation from having felt the effects of a contagious fever in a work-house, soon after this experiment was made.”

It appears suspicious that Jenner makes the conclusion, without explanation, that the boy’s illness was due to the fever that was going around in the workhouse. The account is very poorly detailed, but from what Jenner states, six days after the inoculation, the boy became sick from something that looked like cowpox. Two days after that, he was no longer fit for inoculation (as we later find out, it was because the boy died). There is nothing that indicates the boy was already at the workhouse when inoculated, so we can only assume that he was sent to the workhouse after he fell sick and died there two days later. Especially when looking at the picture attached to his case. It has no date, but it tells a more serious story than Jenner’s account, leaving experts in the field to believe the infection was more serious than he made it sound.

As we mentioned, Jenner didn’t explain properly why the boy was unfit to continue the experiment until a year later, in the second edition of his pamphlet. This account can only be seen in a footnote. Misleadingly, this is found 60 pages past the actual case study. It doesn’t mention the boy’s name, merely refers to him as “Case xviii” and explains that:

“The boy unfortunately died of a fever at a parish workhouse before I had an opportunity of observing what effects would have been produced by the matter of Small Pox.”

Jenner’s vaccine was eventually accepted. The risk of transferring disease was considered to be less likely with vaccination compared to variolation, which eventually tapered out and became illegal in Britain in 1840.

Edward Jenner received much opposition from people, including other doctors who felt his conclusion on cowpox building immunity towards smallpox was false. They had also seen people exposed to cowpox and afterwards become sick with smallpox all the same.

An example of this is the summary of a Gloucestershire Medical Society meeting in 1790. A society of which Jenner was one of the five founders:

“Baron says that at the meetings of this Society Jenner was wont to hold forth on the cow-pox question with such insistence that he was voted a bore by his fellow members, and finally threatened with expulsion if ‘he continued to harass them with so unprofitable a subject.’ Truly, there are some that having ears, yet hear not!”

Such attacks must have frustrated Jenner quite a bit, because in 1798, he wrote in a letter to his friend, Mr. Edward Gardner:

“My friends must not desert me now. Brickbats and hostile weapons of every sort are flying thick around me; but with a very little aid, a few friendly opiates seasonably administered, they will do me no injury.”

Jenner didn’t like his methods criticized. When smallpox broke out in Edinburgh 1818-19 and in Norwich in 1819, many of those who received Jenner’s vaccine died. People started doubting the vaccine actually worked. Jenner’s reaction was to steer the blame away from himself and the vaccines. Instead he pointed out that the vaccine must have been administered incorrectly.

Edgar Crookshank, an English physician and microbiologist who favored the practice of variolation over vaccination, made a good point when he explained that even though variolation was “a dangerous practice”, it was at least a scientific one because it entailed “the prevention or modification of a disease by artificially inducing a mild attack of that disease.”

But he said what Jenner was doing was artificially injecting people with a completely different disease, an idea that has never been scientifically supported. At the end of his book, Crookshank makes a compelling statement:

“Unfortunately, a belief in the efficacy of vaccination has been so enforced in the education of the medical practitioner, that it is hardly probable that the futility of the practice will be generally acknowledged in our generation […] It is more probable that when, by means of notification and isolation, Small Pox is kept under control, vaccination will disappear from practice, and will retain only an historical interest.”

We find it very interesting that a man of his caliber and having been engrossed in the field of infectious diseases, would doubt vaccination efficacy so deeply as to make an official statement saying he does not believe the medical establishment would continue the practice in future.

References for Chapter 3: The medicine man:

The Jenner Institute. (n.d.). About Edward Jenner. Retrieved from http://www.jenner.ac.uk/edward-jenner
Farnaud, S. (2009). The Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research: 39 years of Replacement Science. ATLA, 37(2), 39.
Hadwen W. (1896). The Case Against Vaccination. [An address at Goddard’s assembly rooms, Gloucester, Jan 25). Retrieved from http://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/u...
His “Cuckoo research” can be read in more detail in Dr. Charles Creighton’s book: Jenner and Vaccination: A Strange Chapter of Medical History.
Hadwen W. (1896). The Case Against Vaccination. [An address at Goddard’s assembly rooms, Gloucester, Jan 25]. Retrieved from http://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/u...
Ibid.
James Phipps is said to have died from consumption (Tuberculosis) at age 20. Jenner also vaccinated his son on more than one occasion, who also died of consumption at age 21. There have been arguments that link consumption to be an effect of the smallpox vaccine.
Variolae Vaccinae means Smallpox of the cow. It is a misleading phrase used only in the heading. Not once does it appear in the pamphlet. Considering the fact that many scientists and physicians would only read the heading and the abstract, it erroneously, became widely assumed that cowpox was the same as smallpox of the cow.
Jenner, E. (1798). An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. [Pamphlet]. London: Sampson Low.
Grease is an infection on the hooves of a horse.
Jenner, E. (1798). An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. [Pamphlet, p. 36]. London: Sampson Low.
Jenner, E. (1802). An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. [Pamphlet, p. 59]. Springfield: Ashley & Brewer.
British Medical Association., Kirtland, G., McVail, John., John, C., Hime, T.W., and Royal College of Surgeons of England. (1896). Records of an old Medical Society: Some Unpublished Manuscripts of Edward Jenner. The British Medical Journal, 1298.
Baron, J. (1838). Life of Edward Jenner, M.D. London: Henry Colburn,
Wikipedia. (2018, June 6). Edgar Crookshank. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_C...
Crookshank, E.M. (1889). History and Pathology of Vaccination (Vol. 1, p. 424). Philadelphia: P. Blackiston.
Ibid (p. 464).
Ibid (p. 465-466).