126 Report from the National Vaccine Establishment. 
knowing well that vaccination scarcely occasions the slightest in- 
disposition, that it spreads no contagion, that in a very large pro- 
portion of cases it affords an entire security against small pox, 
and in almost every instance is a protection against danger from 
that disease, are yet hardy enough to persevere in recommending 
the insertion of a poison, of which they cannot pretend to anti- 
cipate either the measure or the issue, (for no discernment is able 
to distinguish those constitutions which will admit inoculated 
small pox with safety), and there are some families so dangerously 
affected by all the eruptive diseases, that they fall into imminent 
hazard in taking any of them. This remark has a particular ap- 
plication to small pox. A family lost its two first-born children 
of the small pox, inoculated by two of the most skilful surgeons 
of the time : nor is it improbable that the parents might have had 
to lament the loss of more children under the same formidable dis- 
ease, if the promulgation of the protecting influence of vaccina- 
tion had not happily interposed to rescue them from the con- 
sequences of a repetition of the fatal experiment. Of their re-_ 
maining children, one took the small pox after vaccination, and 
went through it in that mild and mitigated form which stamps a 
value upon this resource, as real in the eye of reason and. sound 
philosophy, as when it prevents the malady altogether. 
We have contended, Sir, for this its merits, with all the powers 
of our understanding, and with all that just and fair pretension 
‘to convince others, to which we are entitled by being firmly and 
sincerely convinced ourselves. Nor shall we relax in our efforts 
to promote its adoption, but continue to exert the influence 
which the benevolent designs of Parliament, in establishing this 
Board, have given us for extending the benefits of this salutary 
practice. 
That the blessing is not yet absolutely parents we are ready to 
admit ; but when we compare it with inoculation for the small 
pos, the only alternative, we have no hesitation in stating, that 
the comparison affords an irresistible proof of its superior claims 
to regard ; for we learn from ample experience, that the number 
‘of cases of small pox, in the safe form which it is found to assume 
after vaccination, is by no means equal to the number of deaths 
by inoculation; an evidence quite irrefragable, and, as it appears 
to us, decisive as to the incalculable advantages of the practice of 
the first over that of the latter method. 
The number of persons who kave died of small pox this year 
within the bills of mortality is only 508; not more than two 
thirds of the number who fell a sacrifice to that disease the year 
before : and as in our last report we had the satisfaction of stating 
that more persons had been vaccinated during the preceding than 
in any former twelve months, we flatter ourselves that this dimi- 
nution 
