It is not, that I am an enemy to the practice of inoculation; on the contrary, I am a warm friend to it, and have been so for many years. But I am convinced, that the present mode of conducting it is attended with many disadvantages, and that it may be rendered much more safe and efficacious.
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"The cow-pox protects the human constitution from the infection of smallpox."
"I have often been accused of being too sanguine in my expectations; but time will show whether I am right or wrong."
"The deviation of the Cow Pox from its true character appears to be very frequent; and when it does appear, it is, as far as I have seen, uniformly in the following manner: The vesicle, instead of bein…"
"The most important discoveries have often been made by accident."
"I have often found that the most simple remedies are the most efficacious."
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The speaker isn't opposed to inoculation — he's actually been a longtime advocate. But he argues the current method carries unnecessary risks and shortcomings. His point is that something can be sound in principle yet flawed in practice, and that honest criticism of a method you support is how progress happens. He's carving out a reformer's position: not rejection, not blind endorsement, but commitment to making the practice genuinely safer.
Jenner trained under surgeon John Hunter, who taught him to experiment rather than speculate. As a country doctor in Gloucestershire, he spent decades observing that milkmaids exposed to cowpox appeared immune to smallpox. His support for inoculation was real, but his scientific instincts pushed him toward a safer path. This quote captures his character precisely: measured, evidence-driven, loyal to the goal of disease prevention rather than to any particular technique achieving it.
Variolation — deliberately infecting patients with live smallpox material — had been practiced in Britain since the 1720s, introduced from Ottoman Turkey via Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It reduced mortality but carried genuine dangers: recipients could develop full smallpox, die, or spread it to others. By the 1790s, debate over its risks was sharp among physicians. Jenner wrote at the cusp of transformation — his cowpox experiments would soon offer a far safer alternative, vindicating exactly this critique.
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