288 Medicine. 



exterminating the latter disease^ and thereby closing 

 a great outlet of human life. 



To Dr. Jenner, of Great-Britain, the world is 

 indebted for this incomparable discovery. For al- 

 though there has existed, perhaps from time imme- 

 morial, some popular knowledge of the vaccine dis- 

 ease, and of the fact of its rendering the human sys- 

 tem unsusceptible of the small-pox ;^ yet the practice 

 of inoculating it successively from one person to 

 another as a substitute for the small-pox, and the 

 investigation of the principal circumstances which 

 ought to regulate that inoculation, in order to con- 

 fer upon it the greatest certainty and success, seem 

 undoubtedly to have originated with that physician. 

 Further investigations and discoveries have since 

 been made, concerning the nature and the inocu- 

 lation of this disease, by other physicians, particu- 

 larly by Drs. Pearson and AVoodville, and Mr. 

 Ring, of London.'^ 



All preceding ages, and a considerable portion 

 of the eighteenth century, abound in accounts of 



e For a number of years before Dr. Jenner's discovery, it was known 

 to many, physicians as well as others, that a disease existed among the 

 cattle in Great- Britain, particularly in Gloucestershire, which it ivas saidg 

 among the common people, when communicated to the human subject, 

 formed a defence against Small-Pox. Dr. Barry tells us that this disease 

 has been long known in Ireland, under the name of Shinach ,- he gives in- 

 stances of persons who had passed through it ffty years ago ; and mentions 

 that one woman, eighty years of age, declares, that as long as she can re- 

 member, the opinion prevailed, that people who had the Shinach, or Csiv" 

 Fox, could not take the Small-Pox ; and that many, at that early period, 

 purposely exposed themselves to the former, to avoid taking the latter. 

 Traces have also been found of some knowledge of this disease existing in 

 other parts of Europe, among the lower classes of people, a number of 

 years before the publication of Dr. Jenner. See Barry on Coiv-Pox. 



d An institution in Great-Britain, for the purpose of preserving and 

 communicating the 'vaccine infection, and particularly for inoculating the 

 poor, has been formed since the publication of Dr. Jenner's discovery. For 

 this the public are principally indebted to the enlightened and benevolent 

 exertions of Dr. Pearson, of London. A similar institution has been 

 more recently formed in the city of New-York. The first person who 

 inoculated with the vaccine virus, in the United States, was Dr. Water- 

 HOUSE, Professor of the Theory and practice of Physic in the University 

 of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 



