As the
COVID-19 vaccines begin distribution worldwide, we need to be reminded of the extraordinary
medical legacy of Dr. Edward Jenner, the British country doctor who pioneered
vaccination in 1796. His vaccine against Smallpox changed the world. In this talk, I am honored to speak about Dr. Jenner’s courageous fight which resulted in the eradication
of this highly infectious disease.
This was part of a seminar presented at
the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City
From a young age, I worked diligently at presenting myself as
confident, using mainly the comments and praise by my family and teachers about how
mature I was for my age, how smart, and later how I could really take control
and get things done. But regardless of what I showed, I often felt uneasy, and
as time went on, I would go from, "I'm certain, this is the right way to
go" to an hour later feeling "what was I thinking when I said
that?"
In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known Eli Siegel, founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, wrote:
The matter of sureness and unsureness is as great a plague as any in the human mind, because people usually have to act sure in order to forget they are unsure. Every time we are unsure and have to act sure, we feel somewhat ashamed.
These sentences describe the turmoil I was in. I told myself that
being unsure--and especially showing it--was a weakness, a humiliation; and the
best solution was to ride over it, come to a quick decision and act. But this
was not true confidence: it was arrogance. In my conceit I would thoughtlessly
tell people what to do without considering their ideas or feelings, and the
result was I felt even more unsure.
Then in 1985 I learned about and began to study Aesthetic Realism,
and met what I had been looking for. Confidence, I learned--whether about love,
a job, or our general capabilities--has a criterion: we will be confident in
proportion to how fair we are to people and the world itself. And central to be
being fair is the desire to know, which includes the desire to question
ourselves with pleasure and pride. Writes Ellen Reiss, Chair of Education and editor of The Right of:
One can doubt oneself falsely, of course. But there is an underlying self-doubt which... comes from something beautiful in us. And we should try to know it as well as we can, because it is the means to our true sureness. The underlying doubt... unarticulated yet poking and sometimes gnawing and thrusting within us... is this: Am I liking the world more through this thing I'm in the midst of--or am I using it to dislike the world?
In this talk, I'll speak about what I've learned and also on some
aspects of the life of the 18th century physician, Edward
Jenner, whose care for people and great desire to know, resulted in his
discovery of the vaccine for smallpox.
How We See People Determines Whether
Our Confidence Is True or False
I grew up in Ciales, a small town in the mountains of Puerto Rico,
in the midst of an extended family that included my parents, a sister,
grandparents, several aunts, uncles, and cousins. Being the first grandson, I
got a lot of praise that made me feel important; and I felt powerful when
adults would compete for my attention. If my aunt Carmen said “How is my boy? Come and visit me this weekend,” I would hear my aunt Norma from the other room
“Nonsense, he is coming to my house first!” I didn’t know it then, but I was
developing a false and hurtful sense of myself, based on the erroneous
conclusion that other people’s happiness was assured by my presence. All I had
to do was show up. If people outside of my family didn't treat me this way,
they were mean and cold. It never occurred to me that I had an obligation to
know people or be interested in their lives.
In my third Aesthetic Realism consultation, I began to learn that
we use early experiences to come to a general opinion of the world. My
consultants asked:
Consultants Do you think you know your mother?
Jaime Torres Yes, like the palm of my hand.
Consultants So we come to our first disagreement. We’ll ask you this: What was her favorite subject when she was in school?
Jaime Torres I don't know.
Consultants What did she want to be when she grew up?
Who were some of her friends in school?
Jaime Torres I don't know.
Consultants What is her favorite book?
I had no clue! My consultants continued:
Consultants All right, let's take something more
recent--how did your parents meet?
When I answered yet again, “I don’t know,” they asked:
Consultants Dr. Torres, do you think your mother had a
life before you were born; or do you think she was born in 1957 also, just to
serve you?
This consultation was the beginning of useful self-doubt. I
realized that for the most part I wasn’t interested in who people were; I saw
them primarily in relation to myself. That night, I called my parents in Puerto
Rico and told them what I was learning in consultations, and they were very
happy. As I began to learn about the people who gave me life, Delia Figueroa
and Jaime Torres, I felt this is how I want to see everyone! Soon after, I’m
glad to say, my parents began to study Aesthetic Realism themselves in phone
consultations from Puerto Rico and their lives flourished.
Aesthetic Realism showed me--and I love this logic--that when we
go after a false confidence through contempt, we punish ourselves by feeling
timid, inferior, and unsure. Eli Siegel gives this explanation:
The truth that people want to evade most is that they can be their own means of hurting themselves through the way they see what is not themselves. The tendency to make the outside world less as a means of establishing oneself is...most appealing to us; easier than establishing a self through the accuracy and fulness with which we know things.
Whereas I once observed people with a running commentary in my
mind like, "How stupid; I could have done that better," "Where
did he get that shirt?" "She is always talking too much,” I began to
ask myself what could I learn from that person? What did he hope for? Are her
feelings as deep as mine? And as I wanted to know people deeply, I found I
liked myself more and experienced with relief and pleasure a growing feeling of
true sureness.
Love, Confidence, and the Hidalgo
When I met Donita Ellison, like many men, I had two
different notions of confidence as to love: one based on feeling the world and
people added to me; and the other based on thinking I needed only myself.
Donita, originally from Springfield Missouri, is a high school art teacher
using the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method. I was affected by her excitement
about teaching and the kind way she spoke about her students. She is also very
pretty, thoughtful and self critical, which I respected; and she encouraged me
to express my thoughts and feelings. And Donita was a critic of me--of the way
I expected to be treated like a prince. I was swept by her--finding myself
wanting to be with her every day and talk to her. Sometimes I couldn’t go to
sleep at night thinking about her, but then I'd tell myself “We’re not all that
compatible.” In a consultation when I spoke about Donita I mentioned how unsure
I was, even as I talked about how much I cared for her. My consultants said:
It’s clear Ms. Ellison is having a good effect on you. Is she a threat to your big love affair?” “What do you mean?” I said indignantly, “I'm not seeing anyone else!” “The love affair you’ve had with yourself!” they said.
This was true, and I realized that in caring for Donita, I was
more the person I wanted to be and more confident. Through her, the world looked
better to me and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. In 1994 we
were married.
I saw myself as a modern man--we shared household chores, I helped
cooking, I even like doing dishes! But behind all this magnanimity, there still
persisted a way of seeing as backward as Fred Flintstone’s. I felt: We are
married, things are settled, no questions please, you should be happy with this
enlightened husband! However, along with my complacency, there was unsureness
and agitation. And Donita was critical of the way I took her for granted. When
I described this situation in a class, Ellen Reiss enabled me to see the
mistake I was making. She spoke about a noted character in Spanish
literature--the hidalgo, which literately translated to English means "the
son of somebody" and carries with it a feeling of royalty. She asked:
Ellen Reiss Do you think you have the hidalgo feeling?Jaime Torres I think I do.Ellen Reiss Is Ms. Ellison the "daughter of nobody"? Have you felt in some way that you have done her a great favor in being in her company at all?Jaime Torres I think I have.
And she continued:
Ellen Reiss Does contempt hurt one?Jaime Torres Yes, it makes me dislike myself.Ellen Reiss You can feel you are an hidalgo but you can have various unsurenesses.
And these unsurenesses I was right to have. Learning how to oppose
my conceit and to see the true value in my wife and other people has given me
more honest confidence. And Donita and I have a love and deep friendship that
grows every year.
A Man Shows Honest Self-Doubt Makes for True Confidence
I speak now about a man I admire very much: Edward Jenner, who
discovered the vaccine against smallpox--one of the most important
breakthroughs in the history of medicine. His life is evidence for the
necessity of honest self-doubt in order to get to a confidence that is true.
Edward Jenner, born May 17, 1749, was a country doctor in Berkeley,
England. At that time, in 18th century Europe, the smallpox virus routinely
killed millions of people, and the treatment itself was often fatal. He had
heard from the farmers and country folk, as well as his patients, that
milkmaids who contracted a mild disease called cowpox were never infected with
smallpox, and after much study he came to the following theory: that giving
people the milder disease might protect them from the deadlier one. And if this
premise were true, millions of lives could be saved.
Dr. Jenner's desire to know was great, and I have seen that
implicit in this desire was an honest self-doubt. A true scientist never takes
the first thing he hears as ultimate truth; he asks himself over and over--Is
what I'm seeing accurate? What more do I need to see? What have I missed? These
honest questions impelled Edward Jenner to rigorous investigation. For two
years he carefully studied cattle infections to be able to differentiate cowpox
from similar ones. He talked to milkmaids who seemed to be immune from smallpox
and recorded their medical histories. Finally, with excitement and high hopes,
he presented his preliminary findings to the local county medical society on
August 10, 1786. They rejected the report immediately, calling it nonsense, "old
wives tales." Biographer I. E. Levine writes,
Jenner was stunned. True, he had expected the report to receive some criticism... but he had not anticipated such violent onslaught...He had hoped to enlist the help of his colleagues to test his theory.
For a long time afterward he doubted himself and thought of
quitting, but his wife, Katherine Kingscote, encouraged him tremendously.
Jenner continued his methodical research and increasingly came to feel his
hypothesis was true. In 1796, his theory was put to the test when a mother,
very worried about her frail eight-year-old son contracting smallpox, begged
Jenner to inoculate him with cowpox virus. He did, and six weeks later the boy
was reinoculated with smallpox virus—and it worked, he was not infected!
Jenner called this procedure vaccination (from the Latin word 'vacca' for cow).
And as he repeated it again and again on many people, no one became infected
with smallpox! He wrote to a friend saying,
The joy I feel at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities is so excessive that I sometimes find myself in some kind of reverie.
In 1798 Jenner published his research in a pamphlet and he thought
that finally the medical authorities in London would accept his findings. But
that was not to be for a long time. There were grotesque cartoons depicting
vaccinated people growing horns or giving birth to calves, and members of the
powerful Royal Medical Society had the arrogant attitude, described by Levine,
of "Who is this presumptuous country surgeon who is convinced he has found
the answer to a puzzle that has eluded the best medical minds for
decades?"
1802 caricature of Jenner vaccinating patients who feared it would make them sprout cowlike appendages.
Eli Siegel described this state of mind--in any century--when he
wrote:
Some of the best-known scientists acclaimed as scientists didn’t have [the] desire [to know]...There was another desire that was very strong too...The desire for prestige, the desire for importance, is the foulest and most effective enemy of truth both in the sciences and non-sciences.
Because medical persons in established positions were so intent on
protecting their importance and prestige they kept this life-saving vaccine
from people for years and tens of thousands died.
In her commentary to an issue of The
Right of, Ellen Reiss wrote that every person should want to understand
this state of mind because:
It is the most hurtful thing in the world. It is: I should be able to have contempt for anything, be superior in some way to anything; and if anything interferes, it should be crushed.
The onslaught on Jenner helps me understand more and place the
resentment that Eli Siegel endured throughout his life, in even more
encompassing fields. His knowledge was vast and scientific, based on principles
that have been tested and found true. He defined and explained finally things
that had been pondered for centuries: what beauty is, the purpose of life, the
cause of insanity, depression, the cause of war, the aesthetic structure of the
world and ourselves, to mention a few of his seminal breakthroughs. And he was
a poet. His steady desire to know the world and to question himself made him
beautifully confident. What he saw made for tremendous respect. The other side
of this respect, the noted poet William Carlos Williams described this way:
The extreme resentment that a fixed, sclerotic mind feels confronting this new. It shows itself by the violent opposition Siegel received from the "authorities" whom I shall not dignify by naming.
Meanwhile, over 200 years ago, certain "fixed sclerotic minds"
in England were meeting a groundswell of opposition from ordinary English
citizens. Vaccinations went on because parents demanded them and because word
had spread of how, as a result of them, there was no smallpox around Berkley!
So the doctors in London were forced to learn the procedure, but because of
their careless preparation difficulties continued.
Dr. William Woodville, the head of London Smallpox Hospital, seen
as the foremost expert of the disease, published an article charging that after
using Jenner's procedure several patients died. Jenner's conviction, come to
through honest self-doubt, had given him true confidence, the real thing, so
much so, he was impelled to return to London and confront Woodville. Based on
accounts and journal entries Levine recreates this dialogue.
Jenner: "Since you attribute [some deaths] to vaccination, I'd like to examine your records...and if you refuse, I'll be forced to announce that you are unwilling to help me obtain the true facts." Woodville turned pale. He began to sputter. "You are threatening me sir! It’s abominable!" "This is not an issue of personalities at all," Jenner retorted coolly, "The future...is what concerns me."
Upon examinations of records and the treatment rooms, it was clear
that cowpox samples had been tainted with smallpox--the real cause of those
deaths. Jenner asked:
Did you and your assistants wash your lancets between inoculating certain patients with smallpox and others with cowpox matter?" "We merely wipe them with a cloth. That is how it is done everywhere, as you know," he answered.
[This is not the right procedure] Did you read my pamphlet before administering the vaccine?" Jenner persisted.
Woodville adopted a defensive tone. "No, I did not. Nor was
it necessary that I do. I have devoted my entire professional career to the
study of smallpox, there is no one more experienced than me."
Writes Levine:
Here was a distinguished surgeon who had undertaken a new medical technique without even taking the trouble to learn the basic clinical facts about it. The arrogance of the man was almost beyond belief.
This arrogance is so common in the medical profession, and I once
had it. I have seen that this desire to be superior is contempt, and against
the beginning, kind purpose in medicine. Every doctor needs to learn from
Aesthetic Realism about this as much as he or she needs to learn physiology or
anatomy.
Woodville, to his credit, admitted his mistake in front of
Parliament, and changed what had been a smallpox hospital to a vaccine center.
Vaccination was then accepted, and mortality fell dramatically. Jenner was now
praised and sought by royalty and the same people who had earlier rejected him.
And for a short time it seems he succumbed to flattery. He bought a house in
London, spent a lot of money and time with high society, and got more in debt.
His wife was a kind critic when she showed him that "The will of God [was
not for him to] drive round London in his [fancy] coach serving those who were
well able to command other service," but to care for the people who needed
him most. He was grateful to her for opening his eyes; they moved back to
Berkeley where he was glad to become a country doctor again.
Vaccination quickly spread through Europe and the Americas, and
although Jenner received worldwide recognition and many honors, he made no
attempt to enrich himself and actually devoted much of his time vaccinating
people for free--sometimes up to 300 a day. He died on January 26, 1823. In
1980, as a result of Jenner's discovery, the World Health Organization officially declared "the world
and its peoples" free from endemic smallpox.
Bronze in Kensington Gardens, London
Through Aesthetic Realism we can understand the fight in us
between respect and contempt, and how to question ourselves. Because of this
knowledge, I embarked on a new discovery: to know people from the inside, and to
see that their feelings are as real as my own; and I learned to see meaning in
things I had dismissed for a long time. I have seen the pride there is in being
able to question my purpose with the people I meet, the patients I treat as a podiatrist and the woman I love, Donita; and because of it, I feel
increasingly confident. Every man in this world deserves this education.
Article of interest:
Covid vaccine resistance is nothing new. Anti-vaxxers are as old as vaxxing itself