VACCINATION AGAINST SMALLPOX 231 



This inquiry is not now so much in its infancy as to re- 

 Strain me from speaking more positively than formerly on 

 the important point of scrophula as connected with the 

 smallpox. 



Every practitioner in medicine who has extensively in- 

 oculated with the smallpox, or has attended many of those 

 who have had the distemper in the natural way, must ac- 

 knowledge that he has frequently seen scrophulous affections, 

 in some form or another, sometimes rather quickly shewing 

 themselves after the recovery of the patients. Conceiving 

 this fact to be admitted, as I presume it must be by all who 

 have carefully attended to the subject, may I not ask whether 

 it does not appear probable that the general introduction of 

 the smallpox into Europe has not been among the most 

 conductive means in exciting that formidable foe to health? 

 Having attentively watched the effects of the cow-pox in 

 this respect, I am happy in being able to declare that the 

 disease does not appear to have the least tendency to pro- 

 duce this destructive malady. 



The scepticism that appeared, even among the most en- 

 lightened of medical men when my sentiments on the im- 

 portant subject of the cow-pox were first promulgated, was 

 highly laudable. To have admitted the truth of a doctrine, 

 at once so novel and so unlike any thing that ever had ap- 

 peared in the annals of medicine, without the test of the 

 most rigid scrutiny, would have bordered upon temerity; but 

 now, when that scrutiny has taken place, not only among 

 ourselves, but in the first professional circles in Europe, and 

 when it has been uniformly found in such abundant instances 

 that the human frame, when once it has felt the influence 

 of the genuine cow-pox in the way that has been described, 

 is never afterwards at any period of its existence assailable 

 by the smallpox, may I not with perfect confidence con- 

 gratulate my country and society at large on their beholding, 

 in the mild form of the cow-pox, an antidote that is capable 

 of extirpating from the earth a disease which is every hour 

 devouring its victims; a disease that has ever been con- 

 sidered as the severest scourge of the human race! 



