Cow-Pock Institution. 09 



metropolis, and the uninterrupted success that has attended 

 the practice, at once a proof of the zeal, industry and at- 

 tention of the medical officers \ for which I beg leave to 

 make my most grateful acknowledgements. 



" And now, sir, a few remarks on the very extraordinary 

 communication you have make to me respecting Lady 

 C -. It has been one of the usual devices of the ene- 

 mies of vaccination, almost from the time of my first mak- 

 ing it known, to represent me as having lost my confidence 

 of its prophylactic powers, or, at least, that I was wavering 

 on the subject. Can T, who, with the aid of my nephews, 

 have vaccinated a number of persons little short of 30,000, 

 without one single instance of accident or of failure, that 

 ever reached my ears, for a moment entertain such an ab- 

 surd idea? Or could I have ever thought of inoculating 

 for the small-pox, while I hold that practice in abhorrence, 

 and condemn it both publicly and privately ? Believe me, 

 the whole story you relate to me is an entire fiction, with- 

 out the faintest shadow of foundation. Never from the 

 commencement of my experiments to the present hour, 

 have I used a particle of variolous matter, except for the 

 purpose of putting some of those to a test on whom I 

 made my first trials. For some years past, I have relied 

 wholly on the vaccine lymph, for testing those on whom 

 any material irregularity appeared in the progress of the 

 pustule. 



u Believe me, &c. 



Berkeley, Feb. 19, 1809. « EDWARD JeNNER." 



While the directors, with such weight of evidence in its 

 favour, feel themselves warranted in continuing to recom- 

 mend vaccination as a preventive of small-pox, they cannot 

 but regret that in a few cases it has been difficult to deter- 

 mine whether a patient has had the disease constitutionally 

 or locally. They however confidently hope that by pur- 

 suing Mr. Bryce's test, and by increased attention to the 

 progress of the disease, practitioners will be enabled to sur- 

 mount the only objection to a practice which tends to pre- 

 serve more than 30,000 lives annually, in the British Isles> 



Mr. Bryce proposes that a 3econd inoculation be per- 

 formed about the sixth day after the first : the vesicle pro- 

 duced by this second inoculation is accelerated in its pro- 

 gress, so as to arrive at maturity, and again fade, at nearly 

 the same time as the affection arising from the first inocu- 

 lation. Mr, B. considers the acceleration of the second 



G 2 inoculation 



