1813.] 



Qn Vaccination, 



291 



pox, and in contact with them, yet escaping the disease, while 

 every other person took it; and 4312 who in the midst of 

 epidemics affecting whole villages escaped the general contagion : 

 Kiaking in ail 5552 individuals that remained free from the 

 contagion, in circumstances either artificial or natural, in which 

 they ought, had it not been for vaccination, to have beea 

 afflicted v^ith the disease.* 



Similar results have been obtained in all other countries of 

 Europe. 



From all these facts, it is impossible not to conclude that the 

 probability that vaccination will preserve from the small-pox is 

 as strong as that inoculation with small-pox virus itself will 

 prove efficacious ; or that the small-pox will not recur a second 

 time in the same individual: for it appears to us unreasonable, or 

 at least premature, to conclude that small-pox will recur after 

 the one oftener than the other. 



If to these observations we join those which are their natural 

 consequence, and which have been attested by physicians and 

 magistrates, both in France and in other countries, that small-- 

 pox epidemics have been stop[)ed in their progress by vaccina- 

 tion ; that they have been excluded from those villages where 

 vaccination had been generally practised ; that these epidemics, 

 which used to return at stated periods, have ceased to appear at 

 their usual epochs ; that several villages have ceased to know the 

 small-pox, and that it has become much more uncommon than 

 formerly in the great towns themselves, except in those places 

 where the prejudices of the people have rejected vaccination ; 

 that the mortality of children has diminished, and that popula- 

 tion has remarkably increased, in various places— if we consider 

 all these circumstances, we shall not only appreciate the advan- 

 tages which society is likely to reap from the precious discovery 

 of Jenner, but the hope that the small-pox, that dreadful 

 scourge of society, will disappear altogether, will be no longer 

 chimerical ; since this has been already realized in those places 

 where the confidence of the people in the efficacy of vaccination 

 lias induced them generally to adopt it. 



The reports published by the central committee of Paris in 

 1803, 1804, 1806, 1808, 1811, and 1812; and several bulletins 

 of its correspondence, which have been successively published, 

 contain numerous and positive proofs of all that we have ad- 



* Report of the Central Committee in 1803, p. 103 to 168; in 1804, p. 26 

 to 34; in 1806, p. 47 to 60 ; in 1806 and 1807, p. 80 to 70; in 1808 and 1809, 

 p. 60 to 67. Also notes communicated from the report of 1810. We may 

 add that ihe motives which induced M. Chappon to retract his opinion were, 

 that having seen during three years a great number of cases of small-pox, but 

 not one case in those who had been vaccinated, he was oUiged to yield to th» 



T'2 



