214 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 
land’s son, awakened alarm, and caused inoculation to 
be diséredited. 
Notwithstanding this, it was introduced into France 
in 1723 by De La Costa, and accepted: by Chirac, 
Helvetius, and by other physicians of the day. 
Although opposed by the majority, and officially con- 
demned by a: decree of the Sorbonne in 17538, as “un- 
lawful and contrary to the law of God”—a decree 
officially confirmed by the faculty of medicine in 1763 
—inoculation continued to be practised up to the 
- time when vaccination was substituted for it. 
Vaccination appears to have been practised in 
Asia in earlier times. However this may be, it was 
known in the south of France that farm servants who 
had been affected by cow-pox were secured against 
“ small-pox. These pustules generally ogcur on the 
udder, and the milkers were inoculated with the 
vaccine matter, through some accidental scratch on 
their hands. Rabault, a Frenchman, communicated 
this fact in 1798 to Pew, an English physician and 
a friend of Jenner. To Jenner we must assign the 
merit of understanding the importance of this fact, 
and deducing from it one of the most admirable dis- 
coveries of modern medicine, the preventive method 
which continually tends to become more general, and 
to be extended to other diseases, especially since 
Pasteur’s late researches into vaccination for anthrax 
and for fowl-cholera. 
Pasteur has also shown that the microbes are the 
