1. 3. 9. OF SENSATION. 207 



small-pox: to all whom in that situation it is dangerous, as it 

 generally produces miscarriage, and frequently death. Dr. 

 Cappe, in an ingenious paper in the York Herald, observes, that 

 the vaccine disease is never communicated but by contact, and 

 then only when the matter lies on the broken skin; and that 

 many women during pregnancy have passed through this dis- 

 ease^ and none have suffered from it; and that instead of being 

 peculiarly dangerous to young infants, as the small-pox is, it 

 seems to be peculiarly mild 1o them. 



From all these circumstances it may be hoped, that the inocu- 

 lation of the cow-pox may become so general, and performed 

 so early in life, as totally to eradicate the small-pox; by which 

 latter disease above two thousand persons are shewn by Dr. 

 Cappe, by the bills of mortality, to be annually destroyed in a 

 part of London only. 



As the cow-pox is so much less infectious than the small-pox, 

 it requires much more care in the inoculation to give the disease 

 with certainty; whence it has sometimes happened, that a slight 

 inflammation from the puncture of the lancet has been mistaken 

 by the unskilful for the vaccine disease: and I have heard of four 

 such patients in this country, who have afterwards taken the 

 small-pox. But as Dr. Woodville inoculated a thousand people 

 with the small-pox, who had previously received the cow-pox, 

 without one of them taking the infection, there can be no doubt 

 but that the four patients above mentioned had not previously 

 undergone the vaccine disease; and ought not therefore to dis- 

 credit this fortunate and wonderful discovery. 



In the counties where the cows are subject to this disease, the 

 milking is performed principally by men-servants; and it is 

 there believed, as Dr. Jenner mentions, that the disease was pre- 

 viously given to the paps of the cows by the hands of the n<eu 

 who milked them, and who had previously acquired the infec- 

 tious matter from the heels of horses, which discharged an acrid 

 sanies, when they had a disease called the grease. This may be 

 worth further investigation; as the preservation of people from 

 the small- pox, by their having undergone the cow-pox, is so won- 

 derful a phenomenon, so contrary to our previous knowledge of 

 any analogy between the infectious diseases of men and quadru- 

 peds, that other facts equally surprising may exist. May not the 

 small-pox have been originally acquired from the cow-pox? 

 which latter, having been a much older disease, may by process 

 of time have become milder than the former; as the small-pox is 

 believed also to have become much milder than formerly; owing 

 probably to the incapacity of receiving it, which exists in those 

 who have undergone that disease, having in process of tinu> 



