290 On the Progress and present State of 



the most loathsome distemper that visits the human frame, 

 but the most fatal pestilence; sweeping off multitudes du- 

 ring its prevalence, and destroying 'he sight, corrupting the 

 hahit, or otherwise inflicting disease on great nun)l)ers of 

 those who escape its more destructive effects. The practice 

 of inoculation had, it is true, already diminished those evils 

 among the individuals who resorted to it ; but it had un- 

 fortunately augmented the evils among the people in ge- 

 neral, by the perpetual infection which it dissea)inated, and 

 the artificial epidemic which it constantly kept up. In 

 London, for instance, during the first thirty years of the 

 eighteenth century, before inoculation could yet have had 

 any effect, the proportionate number of deaths occasioned 

 by small-pox, as stated in the bills of mortality, was about 

 seventy-four out of every thousand : hut during an equal 

 number of years at the end of the century, the number 

 amounted to nearly one-tenth of the whole mortality, or 

 ninety-five out of every thousand. So that, as far as we 

 are able to judtre from hence, the practice of inoculation, 

 which in itself might be esteemed one of the greatest im- 

 provements ever introduced into the medical art, has ac- 

 tually multiplied the ravages of the disease which it was in- 

 tended to ameliorate, in the proportion of above five to four*. 

 And the extent of the mischief inflicted on the survivors 

 is manifest from a statement published by the Society for 

 teaching the Indigent Blind, that nearly one-fourth of the 

 persons admitted into that charity have been deprived of 

 their sight by the small-pox; not to mention the various 

 forms of scrofula and other diseases which it frequently 

 excites. 



It is true, that the more intelligent classes of society, who 

 have generally adopted the practice of inoculation, have no a 

 considerable degree avoided the worst of these consequences 

 of small-pox : they have seldom been deprived of the bless- 

 ing of sight; and ihev have only been destroyed by the dis- 

 ease in the proportion of about one in three hundred. But 

 the humane will shudder at the recollection, that this ex- 

 emption has been obtained at the expense of so much ad- 

 ditional misery inflicted on the people at large; and that 

 they have but shifted a part of the evils from themselves, to 

 be aggravated in the families of their less enlightened neigh- 

 bours ; while they perpetuate a plague, which would other- 

 wise have had its periods of absolute cessation. 



• See the Tables drawn up by Dr.Heberden, in his " Observation's on the 

 Incieasa and Decrease of different Diseases, &c." p. 36. 



Such 



