z 5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



human subject, but this eruption seems to have had rather the char- 

 acter of a modified variola than that of a true vaccinia / and, as its 

 transmission by inoculation through a succession of human subjects 

 did not produce what the best judges considered a genuine cow-pock, 

 it was allowed to die out. The case was very different, however, with 

 another set of experiments made a few years afterward (in ignorance 

 of Mr. Ceely's) by Mr. Badcock, a druggist at Brighton, who was 

 led to institute them through having himself suffered an attack of 

 small-pox, though vaccinated in early life, and having been thus led 

 to suspect that the protective power of vaccination had undergone 

 deterioration. From the account he gave of his work in a small pam- 

 phlet published in 1845 (for a sight of which I am indebted to his 

 son), it appears 1. That he inoculated his cows with small-pox virus 

 furnished to him from an unquestionable source ; * 2. That this inocu- 

 lation produced vesicles which were pronounced by some of the best 

 practitioners of Brighton to have the characters of genuine vaccinia ; 

 3. That lymph drawn from these vesicles, and introduced by inocula- 

 tion into the arms of children, produced in them vaccine vesicles of 

 the true Jennerian type ; 4. That free exposure of some of these 

 children to small-pox infection showed them to have acquired a com- 

 plete jn-otection ; and, 5. That this new stock of " vaccine " had been 

 extensively diffused through the country, and had been fully approved 

 by the best judges of true vaccinia, both in London and the provinces. 



Mr. Simon, writing in 1857, stated that, from the new stock thus 

 obtained by Mr. Badcock (not once only, but repeatedly), more than 

 14,000 persons had been vaccinated by Mr. Badcock himself, and that 

 he had furnished supplies of his lymph to more than 4,000 medical 

 practitioners. And I learn from Mr. Badcock, junior, who is now a 

 public vaccinator at Brighton, that this stock is still in use in that 

 town and neighborhood. 



Against these positive results are to be set the negative results of 

 attempts made in the same direction by many other able experiment- 

 ers, such as Professor Chauveau and his coadjutors, the recent Belgian 

 Commission, and Professor Burdon-Sanderson, as well as the unsatis- 

 factory results obtained by Ceely. But I can not see that their non- 

 successes are in any way contradictory of the absolute and complete 

 successes which, if testimony is to be trusted, were obtained by Thiele 

 and Badcock. The lesson taught by the failures appears to me to be 

 the careful imitation of the conditions under which the successes were 

 obtained ; and, as Mr. Badcock, senior, is still living, and is said to be 

 both able and willing to give all needful information, it is the inten- 



* The only possible fallacy in these experiments, as it seems to me, might lie in' liis 

 medical friend, Mr. (afterward Sir J.) Cordy Burrows, having supplied him with vaccine 

 lymph, instead of with variolous virus. But, though this might have been the case once 

 or twice, it could scarcely have happened several times, except by design, which is scarcely 

 to be thought of. 



