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Evidence-Based Medicine in the Eighteenth Century: The Ingen Housz–Jenner Correspondence Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Norman Beale  and
Elaine Beale
Elaine Beale
Affiliation:
3 Main Road, Cherhill, Calne, Wiltshire, SN11 8UX, UK, [email protected]
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Information
Medical History , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , 01 January 2005 , pp. 79 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 A letter from Jan Ingen Housz to Edward Jenner (1749–1823) dated Wandsworth, 20 Dec. 1798 and an autographed but undated lower half of an earlier letter from Jenner to Ingen Housz. Both are held in the Gemeentearchief, Breda, see notes 63 and 69 below.

2 J Baron, The life of Edward Jenner, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., 2 vols, London, Henry Colburn, 1838, vol. 1, pp. 289–301.

3 P Van der Pas, ‘The Ingenhousz–Jenner correspondence’, Janus, 1964, 51: 202–20.

4 E Jenner, An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae, London, Sampson Low, 1798.

5 U Tröhler, “To improve the evidence of medicine”: the 18th century British origins of a critical approach, Edinburgh, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2000, p. 1.

6 Royal Society of London, Journal Book (Copy), vol. 25 (1763–6), p. 324. Ingen Housz is introduced as a guest for the first time on 15 Nov. 1764.

7 We shall refer, subsequently, to “smallpox inoculation” as “variolation”, i.e. the insertion, through a scratch or other superficial skin puncture, of live or dried smallpox serum. This is the only practical way of avoiding confusion with Jenner's introduction of inoculation using cowpox serum—“vaccination”. The possibilities of ambiguity are otherwise rife even though neither term had been coined at the time of this correspondence.

8 J Wiesner, Jan Ingen-Housz: sein Leben und sein Wirken als Naturforscher und arzt, Vienna, Konegen, 1905, pp. 22, 23.

9 Royal Society of London, Certificates of Election III, 1769.

10 J Ingen-Housz, Experiments upon vegetables, London, P Elmsley & H Payne, 1779.

11 Letter from Jan Ingen Housz to William Falconer, MD, Senior Physician, Bath Hospital, 25 Nov. 1791. Published in W Falconer, An account of the efficacy of the aqua mephitica alkalina, London, Cadell, 1792, pp. 132–48, on p. 140.

12 Lansdowne House dinner guests book, Jan. 1788–June 1792: The Bowood House archives.

13 Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) English philosopher, jurist and social reformer.

14 N Beale, E Beale, Who was Ingen Housz, anyway?, Calne, Calne Town Council, 1999.

15 First Marquis of Lansdowne, Bowood, letter to Jan Ingen Housz, 7 Sept. 1792. Gemeentearchief, Breda, IV, 16A, 13.

16 Wiesner, op. cit., note 8 above, p. 23.

17 Ibid., pp. 27–8.

18 D Baxby, Jenner's smallpox vaccine, London, Heinemann Educational Books, 1981, p. 27.

19 R Fisher, Edward Jenner (1749–1823), London, Andre Deutsch, 1991, p. 13.

20 Ibid., p. 20.

21 John Hunter, Letters from the past: from John Hunter to Edward Jenner, London, Royal College of Surgeons, 1976.

22 Royal Society of London, Certificates of Election V, 112, 1789.

23 Fisher, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 59.

24 Ibid., pp. 66–7.

25 E M Wallace, The first vaccinator: Benjamin Jesty of Yetminster and Worth Matravers and his family, [Swanage], E M Wallace, 1981, p. 7.

26 P Saunders, Edward Jenner, the Cheltenham years, 1753–1823, Hanover, NH, and London, University Press of New England, 1982, p. 26.

27 Ibid., p. 66.

28 S R Gloyne, John Hunter, Edinburgh, Livingstone, 1950, p. 92.

29 D Baxby, ‘Edward Jenner's unpublished cowpox Inquiry and the Royal Society: Everard Home's report to Sir Joseph Banks’, Med. Hist., 1999, 43: 108–10, on p. 108.

30 Jenner, op. cit., note 4 above, p. 45.

31 Baxby, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 109.

32 Fisher, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 75.

33 On paper of good quality, double-spaced, and in a large font, the text consisted of some 10,000 words, aggregated into 88 paragraphs on 74 quarto folios. Four of the pages were given over to Jenner's own immaculate coloured drawings of typical cowpox lesions.

34 D Baxby, ‘Edward Jenner's Inquiry; a bicentenary analysis’, Vaccine, 1999, 17: 301–7.

35 It is worth noting that Jenner only records this important distinction in a footnote to p. 7 of the Inquiry, and that the word “spurious” appears only on p. 74.

36 Letter to Agatha Ingen Housz, Vienna, from Jan Ingen Housz, London, 24 July 1798. Gemeentearchief, Breda, IV, 16B–4; letter to Josef Jacquin, Vienna, from Jan Ingen Housz, London, 24 July 1798, Gemeentearchief, Breda, IV, 16B–6; letter to Stametz & Co, Bankers, Vienna, from Jan Ingen Housz, London, 24 July 1798, Gemeentearchief, Breda, IV, 16B–7a.

37 Sir William Herschel, C Herschel, Visitors Book (1783–1846), Caird Library, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MS80/031.

38 Lady Upper Ossory, Oundle, letter to Lady Caroline Fox, Bowood, 4 Oct. 1798, BL Add. MSS 51966, fol. 88.

39 Lady Caroline Fox, niece of Charles James Fox, and her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Vernon, both unmarried and otherwise homeless, were relatives, by his second marriage, of the first Marquis of Lansdowne and had been taken in by him in the late 1780s.

40 Lady Caroline Fox, 77 Upper Guildford Street, London, letter to Jan Ingen Housz, 35 Marylebone Street, 31 Dec. 1798, Gemeentearchief, Breda, IV, 16A–13.

41 Jan Ingen Housz, letter to Edward Jenner, 12 Oct. 1798, Gemeentearchief, Breda IV, (Van Hal), 5–38, 55.

42 Baron incorporates this into the text of the letter in his publication of 1838.

43 The footnote to which this seems to refer is not in the Breda copy original and is omitted by Baron. It presumably refers to Jenner's assertion, on these pages of the Inquiry, that stale smallpox “matter”, kept in a warm place, is prone to putrefaction and therefore to loss of potency.

44 Van der Pas, op. cit., note 3 above, pp. 214–15; Baron, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 291–3.

45 Jan Ingen Housz, letter to Edward Jenner, 12 Oct. 1798, Gemeentearchief, Breda IV, (Van Hal), 5–38, 55.

46 Baron, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 289.

47 N Beale, Is that the doctor?, Bradford on Avon, Ex Libris Press, 1998, p. 17.

48 W C Plenderleath, The white horses of the west of England, London, Russell Smith, 1885, pp. 25–7.

49 Handwritten memo by Jan Ingen Housz entitled ‘On Dr. Priestley’, Gemeentearchief, Breda, IV, 16A, 8.

50 D A Crowley (ed.), A history of the County of Wiltshire, vol. 17, Calne Hundred, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Boydell and Brewer, 2002, p.78.

51 Jenner, op. cit., note 4 above, p. 9.

52 Ibid., p. 3.

53 Baxby, op. cit., note 34 above, p. 306.

54 Diary of William Davies, Jenner's nephew, WMS 2052, Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Wellcome Library.

55 Van der Pas, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 216.

56 This is a quotation from Horace (bc 65–8), The art of poetry, lines 352–3. It translates as: “(I shall not take offence at a few blots) which a careless hand has let drop, or human frailty has failed to avert” (Horace: satires, epistles and ars poetica, transl. H Rushton Fairclough, London, Heinemann, 1926, pp. 478–9).

57 Also from Horace, this is a quotation from The first book of epistles, ch. 5, Epistle to Numicius, lines 67 and 68. It translates as: “If you know something better than these precepts, pass it on, my good fellow. If not join me in following these.” (Ibid., pp. 290–1.)

58 Warren Hastings (1732–1818) sought his fortune in India. He rose through the ranks of the East India Company to become, in 1774, the Governor of Bengal and then Governor-General of the colony. His meteoric success brought him powerful enemies and serious allegations, in London, of misconduct and corruption resulting in a Parliamentary Inquiry with a view to impeachment. He was finally acquitted in 1795, having regained his family “seat” at Daylesford in Gloucestershire.

59 Whom we later learn to be the Reverend Thomas Leigh (1734–1813), Rector of St Mary Magdalene Church, Adlestrop, for fifty-seven years (plaque on chancel wall of the church). He was a first cousin to Jane Austen's mother (née Leigh).

60 Baron, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 293–5.

61 Van der Pas, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 215.

62 The case of Elizabeth Sarsenet, a dairy maid who suffered cowpox contemporaneously with all the other servants at the farm where she worked but to a lesser extent. Jenner admits that she still suffered (mild) smallpox at a later date.

63 Edward Jenner (undated), letter to Jan Ingen Housz, Gemeentearchief, Breda IV, (Van Hal), 5–38.

64 Van Der Pas, op. cit., note 3 above, pp. 217–18; personal communication.

65 Van Der Pas, personal communication.

66 Fisher, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 66.

67 Jan Ingen Housz, letter to Lady Caroline Fox, 3 Jan. 1799, BM Add MSS 51967, fols. 64,65.

68 Baron, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 298.

69 Jan Ingen Housz, letter to Edward Jenner, 20 Dec. 1798, Gemeentearchief, Breda IV, (Van Hal), 5, 38.

70 George Pearson, MD, FRS (1751–1828) was a physican at St George's Hospital and was to take up, enthusiastically, the introduction of vaccination in London (see Fisher, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 86).

71 Dr Maxwell Garthshore, MD, FRS (1732–1812) knew Ingen Housz well and wrote an early biographical account of him in Annals of Philosophy, 1817, 10: 3.

72 “Eating only increases the appetite”; a quotation attributed to Rabelais (1492–1553).

73 Greek—“make haste slowly”.

74 G Pearson, An inquiry concerning the history of the cowpox: principally with a view to supersede and extinguish the smallpox, London, J Johnson, 1798.

75 Baxby, op. cit., note 34 above, p. 305.

76 E Jenner, Further observations on the variolae vaccinae, or cow pox, London, Sampson Low, 1799.

77 Baron, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 301.

78 Ibid., pp. 290, 295.

79 D Fisk, Dr. Jenner of Berkeley, London, Heinemann, 1959, p. 147.

80 Fisher, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 83.

81 Van Der Pas, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 207.

82 See note 13 above.

83 E Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterwards first Marquess of Lansdowne, 3 vols, London, Macmillan, 1875–1876, vol. 3, p. 447.

84 H Gest, ‘Bicentenary homage to Dr. Jan Ingen Housz, MD (1730–1799), pioneer of photosynthesis research’, Photosynthesis Research, 2000, 63: 183–90, pp. 186–7.

85 H Reed, ‘Jan Ingenhousz: plant physiologist’, Chronica Botanica, 1949, 11: 285–396, on p. 300.

86 B Oberg (ed.), The papers of Benjamin Franklin, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999, vol. 35, p. 550.

87 Fisher, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 30.

88 Baron, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 296.

89 F Fenner, D Henderson, I Arita, Z Ježek and I D Ladnyi, Smallpox and its eradication, Geneva, World Health Organisation, 1988, p. 264.

90 Matter taken during a cowpox outbreak in north London in January 1799 was used to begin vaccinations in the capital but many recipients developed rashes consistent with smallpox. Jenner's over-enthusiastic and careless acolytes, usually variolators, had somehow mixed the serum with that from their smallpox cases. The result could have been a disastrous smallpox epidemic and, for the future of vaccination, terminal. See D Baxby, Vaccination: Jenner's legacy, Berkeley, Jenner Educational Trust, 1994, p. 18.

91 E Jenner, The origin of vaccine inoculation, London, Shury, 1801, p. 8.

92 Fenner, et al., op. cit., note 89 above, p. 1062.

93 Bath Library, The Podium, Bath.

94 Fisher, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 60.