This one is a woman, with all a woman’s wit, combined with the heartlessness of a cocotte.

That smallpox could ravage London in the mid-nineteenth century, despite the existence of a new medical measure to prevent it, was a source of great frustration to the vaccinationists. In 1840 the epidemiologist William Farr railed against the fact that five children a day were dying of smallpox in London.

A murrain on thy voice! it is enough to fray every hawk from the perch.

Come on guys, settle down, it's time to get started