384 Vaccine Pock Institution. 
carefully the effects of the vaccine contagion, yet a register 
has been kept reporting the history of nearly 15,000 patients 
attending at this institution,—a record, it is believed, far ex- 
ceeding in observations that of the practice of any other so- 
ciety in existence. 
But this institution has been still more extensively useful 
by the diffusion of the practice through other channels. From 
this source many thousand vaccinators have received matter 
for inoculation. It has been the appointed office exclusively 
for the supply of the army, navy, and ordnance departments ; 
and at a very early period, with the approval of the English 
minister of state, Paris first experienced the benefit of the 
new practice, by the communication with this institution; as 
well as, it is believed, Vienna and other parts of Germany, 
Russia, Portugal, the East and West Indies, America, and 
New South Wales. 
Further, the institution has promoted the practice by afford- 
ing instructions and showing the mode of inoculation to a 
number of students and inexperienced vaccinators. 
As evidence of the labour of investigation, the Medical Board 
have issued several publications to promulgate facts and de- 
termine doubtful points in practice, and information has been 
transmitted to several medical and philosophical journals. 
Communications have been received and registered of ex- 
traordinary occurrences in the new practice ; by these means 
materials have been gradually accumulated in the journals of 
the institution, which may prove beneficial to mankind by a 
history of the vaccine inoculation. 
On the subject of the maintenance of this institution it will 
create surprise, and perhaps be found unexampled, that a 
small body, chiefly of medical men, should be enabled, with 
the assistance of their friends, to pay the cost of a house, se- 
cretary, medicine, printing, postages, advertisements, Xc. &c. 
and even defray the expense of carriage-hire to procure the 
attendance of extraordinary cases, without incurring debt, 
during more than twenty-six years. : 
The number of patients applying for vaccination has been 
progressively and rapidly increasing, especially during the last 
three years, as the records of the institution accurately de- 
monstrate, and thereby prove the great advantage the public 
were weekly deriving from the gratuitous services of the mem- 
bers of this establishment. 
It is grievous, however, to state, that owing to deaths of 
most of the original friends, and defalcations of others by va- 
rious accidents, and perhaps also by the failure of the institu- 
tion to solicit the public for contributions, the funds are ex- 
, hausted, 
