VOL. LXX.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 725 



part were lost, notwithstanding the many disadvantages which unavoidably 

 occurred. Professor Camper had before attempted to introduce inoculation in 

 Holland; but his abilities, diligence, and perseverance, were so much counter- 

 acted by the obstinacy and interruption of the peasants, the badness of the situa- 

 tion, and inclemency of the weather, that out of 112 only 41 recovered; and 

 yet that number is fully sufficient to prove his opinion of the disease, and of the 

 use of inoculation. 



Application was made, in 1770, to the lord president of the council by a 

 famous inoculator, for leave to take matter from the infected beasts in Hamp- 

 shire, and to inoculate the cattle in the southern and western counties of Eng- 

 land : on a representation to his lordship, that by such an operation the conta- 

 gion would not only be introduced in those counties where it had not yet ap- 

 peared, but also might spread the sickness, so as to become general all over the 

 kingdom as before, a positive and strict injunction was given to drop the inten- 

 tion ; especially as by killing the cattle there was no doubt of extirpating the 

 contagion out of Hampshire. The inoculator therefore made no attempt. 



According to the several prejudices of different countries, various opinions 

 have arisen of the nature of this sickness. Such as are averse to inoculation 

 have obstinately refused to acknowledge it was similar to the small-pox in the 

 human body, and have very idly asserted, that the only intention of declaring 

 this contagion to be a sort of small-pox was purposely, and with no other view, 

 than to promote inoculation for the small-pox. Others have as positively de- 

 clared it to be a pestilential putrid fever, owing to a corrupted atmosphere, and 

 arising from infected pastures ; but unfortunately for the supporters of this opi- 

 nion, while the contagious distemper raged with the utmost violence on the 

 coasts of Frieseland, North and South Holland, Zealand, and Flanders, there 

 was not the least appearance of it on the English coast from the North Fore- 

 land to the Humber, though the coast and climate are the same. 



It is needless to dwell on Mr. Turberville Needham's eloquent discourse read 

 at Brussels ; since he must have been convinced, when he came to England in 

 1776, that the illness was not of the kind that he imagined ; for such a proof of 

 the inefficacy of salt recommended by him as an antiseptic in this disease had 

 been given as is positive and decisive ; viz. that in Scania, a province in Sweden, 

 where it is customary to place a large piece of rock salt, called salt-stein, for the 

 cattle housed in winter to lick, that they may be urged to drink, all the cattle in 

 that province were seized with the contagious distemper, and not one out-lived 

 it. M. Bergius had insisted, that the contagion was not of the exanthematous 

 kind, and therefore inoculation must be of no use ; but this opinion was also 

 fully refuted by the late Professor Erxleben of Gottingen, in his learned oration 

 on the 20th of October, 1770. 



