VACCINATION AGAINST SMALLPOX 215 



which differs essentially from mine in a point of much 

 importance. It appears that three-fifths of the patients 

 inoculated were affected with eruptions, for the most part 

 so perfectly resembling the smallpox as not to be dis- 

 tinguished from them. On this subject it is necessary 

 that I should make some comments. 



When I consider that out of the great number of cases 

 of casual inoculation immediately from cows which from 

 time to time presented themselves to my observation, and 

 the many similar instances which have been communicated 

 to me by medical gentlemen in this neighbourhood; when 

 I consider, too, that the matter with which my inocula- 

 tions were conducted in the years 1797, '98, and '99, was 

 taken from some different cows, and that in no instance 

 any thing like a variolous pustule appeared, I cannot feel 

 disposed to imagine that eruptions, similar to those de- 

 scribed by Dr. Woodville, have ever been produced by the 

 pure uncontaminated cow-pock virus; on the contrary, I 

 do suppose that those which the doctor speaks of originated 

 in the action of variolous matter which crept into the 

 constitution with the vaccine. And this I presume hap- 

 pened from the inoculation of a great number of the pa- 

 tients with variolous matter (some on the third, others on 

 the fifth, day) after the vaccine had been applied; and 

 it should be observed that the matter thus propagated be- 

 came the source of future inoculations in the hands of 

 many medical gentlemen who appeared to have been pre- 

 viously unacquainted with the nature of the cow-pox. 



Another circumstance strongly, in my opinion, support- 

 ing this supposition is the following: The cow-pox has 

 been known among our dairies time immemorial. If pus- 

 tules, then, like the variolous, were to follow the com- 

 munication of it from the cow to the milker, would not 

 such a fact have been known and recorded at our farms? 

 Yet neither our farmers nor the medical people of the neigh- 

 bourhood have noticed such an occurrence. 



A few scattered pimples I have sometimes, though very 

 rarely, seen, the greater part of which have generally 

 disappeared quickly, but some have remained long enough 

 to suppurate at their apex. That local cuticular inflara- 



