On the state of vaccination in 1810; in a letter to the Right Hon. Richard Rider, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department : with remarks on the Report of the National Vaccine Establishment. Printed by order of the House of Commons, on the 1st of June, 1810 : Forming a guide for parents in deciding for the safety of their children / by Charles Maclean.

Charles Maclean

Date:: 1810

Credit: On the state of vaccination in 1810; in a letter to the Right Hon. Richard Rider, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department : with remarks on the Report of the National Vaccine Establishment. Printed by order of the House of Commons, on the 1st of June, 1810 : Forming a guide for parents in deciding for the safety of their children / by Charles Maclean. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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on this subject, in the early Numbers of the Medical Observer, supposed to be effusions of the muse of friend Walker, their quondam Secretary*. This was a blow, which vaccination scarcely seemed able to -survive. But it did not, suit the consistency of Parliament, which had voted thirty thousand pounds, twenty of them only the year before, to the discoverer, to let their adoption, instantaneously drop. In June, 1808, it was determined to have a. National Vaccine Establishment; and Sir Lucas Pepys, with the Right Honourable George Rose, and Dr. Jenner, drew up a plan of it. In December, 1808, a board^vas con- stituted; consisting of Dr. Jenner as Director, and the President and Censors of the College of Physicians, to- gether with the Master, and Governors* of the College of Surgeons, as Members. But Dr. Jenner, for reasons best known to himself, immediately abdicated; and has, I believe, never since shewn his face in the metropolis, or in Cheltenham. Well knowing, from experience, the nature of such bodies, the original opponents of vaccination abstain- ed from communicating facts to this establishment, assured, from a great deal of experience, that their communications would be misrepresented, or buried in oblivion. They preferred appealing, in a more direct and independent way, to the public; and their success is best evinced by the conduct of the vaccinators. [REPORTS.] I now come to the main subject of my Letter—the very extraordinary Reports of this establishment, to your- * See the Jennerie. Opera, .Med. Obs. .Vol.. III. p. 367, and Vol.. IV. p. 18, 163, 261, VolV. 347, Vol. VI. 9. E 2

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