358 Medicine, [ChAp. IV. 



system 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 confer upon it the greatest certainty and suc- 

 cess, seem undoubtedly to have originated with 

 that physician. Further investigations and disco- 

 veries have since been made, concerning the nature 

 and the inoculation of this disease, by other phy- 

 sicians, particularly by Drs. Pearson and Wood- 

 villc, and Mr. Ring, of London f. ' 



* For a number of years before Dr. Jenncr's discovery, it was 

 kno^vn to many, physicians as well as others, that a disease exist- 

 ed among the cattle in Great Britain, particularly in Gloucester- 

 shire, which it xnas said, among the common people, when com- 

 municated 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 instances of per- 

 sons who had passed through it Jifty years ago ; and mentions that 

 one woman, eight 1/ years of age, declares, tliat as long as she can 

 remember, the opinion prevailed, that people who had the Shi- 

 nach, or Cow-Pox, could not take tlie S)?iall-Pox; and that many, 

 at tliat early period, purposely exposed themselves to tlie 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 tlie publica- 

 tion of Dr. Jenner. — See Barry on Coiv-Pox. 



t An institution for the purpose of preserving and communi- 

 cating the vaccine infection, and particularly for inoculating 

 the poor, has been formed in London since the publication of 

 Dr. Jenner's discovery. For this the public are principally 

 indebted to the enlightened and benevolent exertions of Dr. 

 Pearson. 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. Waterhouse, 

 professor of the theory and practice of physic in the university 

 of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 



