Dr. Murray on Vaccination. 339 



want of disposition might probably exist in their constitution 

 to the influence of the Vaccine-Pox ; and I communicated my 

 opinion to the Director-General of the Army Medical Depart- 

 ment at home, with the view of obtaining information, whether 

 in the late Variolous Epidemics in Europe, any difference had 

 been observed in the protection afforded by Vaccination, where 

 it had been performed in very early infancy, and where it had 

 been deferred till after the age of two or three years ; and as I 

 thought the information received from the gentleman to whom 

 my paper was referred, was unsatisfactory, 1 therefore still feel 

 anxious that the subject should be investigated whenever 

 opportunities of observing Epidemic Small-Pox should occur. 



The indisposition of very young infants to contagious diseases 

 in general (Hooping-Cough perhaps excepted) has been ob- 

 served by our most experienced Physicians ; and regarding 

 their insusceptibility to Small-Pox, which may be considered 

 to bear the closest affinity to Vaccine-Pox, (if they are not in 

 reality modifications of the same original contagion,) I shall 

 state the opiuion of some authors who had the best opportunities 

 of observing this disease in the time of its greatest prevalence 

 and severity before the introduction of Vaccination; and whose 

 testimony is not to be doubted. 



Dr. Underwood, who wrote specially on the Diseases of 

 Children, states, that " though the Small-Pox is a complaint 

 so incident to early life, that, comparatively, few children 

 living to the age of 8 or 10 years are found to escape it, yet it 

 is not so readily communicated in the state of early infancy as 

 hath been generally imagined, unless by immediate infection, 

 i. e. by inoculation." — " Everyone" he observes "knows how 

 very few infants he has heard of having received the Small-Pox 

 naturally, though fewer of those are inoculated than of children 

 above a year old, and this exemption from the natural Small- 

 Pox does not seem to arise iVom their not being exposed to the. 

 ordinary means of contagion, especially among the lower and 

 middling ranks of people, who form the bulk of mankind:" 

 "The poor furnish frequent instances of the truth of this 

 observation. I have attended Nvi^ere children w«re born in an 

 air saturated as it were with the miasm of this disease, and even 

 lying continually in a cradle in which another child had died a 

 few days before, and who iiave nevertheless escaped ll»c disease ; 

 and sometimes when they have slept together in the saojic bed 

 with one loaded with it." 



Relative to the tabular account of deaths from Small-Pox, 

 for the years from 17^8 to 1771, as collected from the Register 

 of the Collegiate Church, at Manchester, and recorded in the 

 5th volunin of the Medical Observations and Inquiries, Dr. 

 Percival observes, that " from said document he thinks it may 

 be concluded that Small Pox rarely occurs to rhildrca in the 



