VACCINATION AGAINST SMALLPOX 207 



ical men of the greatest accuracy in their observations, I am 

 fully convinced that what the men supposed to be cow-pox 

 was actually so, and I can safely affirm that they effectually 

 resisted the smallpox." 



Mr. Fry, Surgeon, at Durslcy in this county, favours me 

 with the following communication: 



" During the spring of the year 1797 I inoculated fourteen 

 hundred and seventy-five patients, of all ages, from a fort- 

 night old to seventy years; amongst whom there were many 

 who had previously gone through the cow-pox. The exact 

 number I cannot state; but if I say there were nearly thirty, 

 I am certainly within the number. There was not a single 

 instance of the variolous matter producing any constitutional 

 effect on these people, nor any greater degree of local in- 

 flammition than it would have done in the arm of a person 

 who had before gone through the smallpox, notwithstanding 

 it was invariably inserted four, five, and sometimes six 

 different times, to satisfy the minds of the patients, In the 

 common course of inoculation previous to the general one 

 scarcely a year passed without my meeting with one or two 

 instances of persons who had gone through the cow-pox, 

 resisting the action of the variolous contagion. I may fairly 

 say that the number of people I have seen inoculated with 

 the smallpox who, at former periods, had gone through the 

 cow-pox, are not less than forty ; and in no one instance have 

 I known a patient receive the smallpox, notwithstanding they 

 invariably continued to associate with other inoculated 

 patients during the progress of the disease, and many of 

 them purposely exposed themselves to the contagion of the 

 natural smallpox ; whence I am fully convinced that a person 

 who had fairly had the cow-pox is no longer capable of being 

 acted upon by the variolous matter. 



"I also inoculated a very considerable number of those 

 who had had a disease which ran through the neighbourhood 

 a few years ago, and was called by the common people the 

 swine-pox, not one of whom received the smallpox." 



"There were about half a dozen instances of people who 

 never had either the cow- or swine-pox, yet did not receive 



11 Thlt WM that mild variety of the tmtllpox which I hare noticed in tke 

 late Treatise on the Cow-Pox (p. 2^3). 



