The Medical Society of London presented him with a gold medal
struck in his honor; in Berlin in 1812 there was a Jennerian
festival on the anniversary of Phipps's vaccination. Addresses
and diplomas were showered on him, and in 1813 the University
of Oxford conferred on him the degree of M.D. honoris causa. As
he refused point blank to pass the examination in Latin and
Greek required by the Royal College of Physicians of London,
Jenner never obtained admission into that learned body. When
some one recommended him to revise his classics so that he
might become an F.R.C.P. he replied, "I would not do it for a
diadem"; and then, thinking of a far better reward, added: "I
would not do it for John Hunter's museum."

But while the pure in heart were thus receiving the blessing
offered them by the benovelent man of science, the pests of
society, those discontented and jaundiced ones who are always
to be found in the dark recesses of the cave of Adullam, were
not idle. Many of his medical colleagues did indeed sneer, as
some are always apt to do at any new thing however good. To all
these Jenner replied, and a very great deal of his valuable
time was consumed in arguing with them. But the sect of the
anti-vaccinators had arisen, and was to some extent organized.
Caricatures, lampoons, scurrilities, vulgarities and
misrepresentations, the mean, were scattered on all sides.
Nothing was too absurd to be stated or believed--that
vaccinated persons had their faces grow like oxen, that they
coughed like cows, bellowed like bulls and became hairy on the
body. One omniscient objector declared that, "vaccination was
the most degrading relapse of philosophy that had ever
disgraced the civilized world." A Dr. Rowley, evidently