34 



1. The eruptive febrile disease, which lately prevailed 

 among the aborigines, was contagious, or communicable from 

 one person to another, and capable of being propagated by 

 inoculation. 



2. It approached more nearly in its symptoms to the 

 character of small-pox than any other disease with which we 

 are acquainted, particularly to that species of small-pox 

 described by Staff- Surgeon Marshall as occurring in the 

 Kandyan Provinces in 1819 (quoted in Good's "Study of 

 Medicine," vol. iii., p. 82). 



3. The mortality attending the disease varied from one 

 in three to one in five or six, but might have been less if 

 the persons labouring under it had been sheltered from the 

 weather, and attended by physicians. 



4. Vaccination ( 15 ) seemed to possess a controlling power 

 over it, as three blacks who had been successfully vaccin- 

 ated, although equally exposed to the disease, escaped 

 infection. 



5. It was not confined to the aborigines, but in one in- 

 stance attacked a European in the form of secondary small- 

 pox, and proved fatal to a child with symptoms resembling 

 confluent small-pox. 



6. In several cases it occasioned bindness, and left many 

 of the poor blacks in a very debilitated and helpless condi- 

 tion, with marks which could not be distinguished from the pits 

 of small-pox on different parts of their bodies. 



7. It was never observed to attack any of the aborigines 

 a second time, and it spread alarm and consternation among 

 jhem. 



Bennett (15, I., 148), himself a qualified medical man, 

 besides quoting the foregoing summary, comments at some 

 length on Dr. Mair's report, and the perusal of the chapter 

 with the other available evidence will, I think, leave little 

 doubt in the mind of any doctor familiar with the subject 

 that the disease could have been no other than true small-pox. 

 Yet there are circumstances frequently mentioned in connec- 

 tion with the various outbreaks which are not quite con- 

 sistent with the known behaviour of this disease when epidemic 

 among unvaccinated white people. 



1. If Mair's estimate of its mortality during the 

 Bathurst outbreak is correct — for it is not stated how it 

 was arrived at, nor to what number of cases it referred, and, 

 in any case, it could scarcely have been very accurately 



(13) The discovery of the protective effect of vaccination was 

 announced by Jenner in 1798. 



