X 
PROCEEDINGS OE THE 
The practice of inoculation as a preventive of an attack of disease 
was not a modern one. It was known to what he might call the 
lower races of people, such as the former inhabitants of Wales and 
Scotland, and had been in use for smallpox by Arab physicians 
since an early period. It was well known that there were some 
diseases which, having once attacked the human frame, were not 
likely to recur, or if they did so, it was usually in a very mild form. 
Such were small-pox, which rarely reappeared; measles, which did so 
more frequently; and even the plague. The idea was that when 
such a disease attacked a person, it exhausted a certain part of the 
frame in the same manner-that fungi exhausted certain constituents 
of the soil where they grew, and travelling outward to obtain fresh 
supplies, formed those “fairy rings” with which we are familiar. 
Inoculation for small-pox was the first known application of the 
principle. This was introduced from Constantinople into London as 
early as 1721. The practice was to inoculate a healthy person 
with virus taken from some one who had had the disease in a mild 
form, and among the first who promoted this system was Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu, whose delightful letters no doubt some of 
those present had read. Her example was followed by the Princess 
of Wales in 1722, who allowed her children to he inoculated. 
Among those who had been inoculated the deaths from small-pox 
were only about one in sixty cases, whereas in three years 2,351 
deaths had occurred in 14,559 cases of small-pox among those 
who had not been protected in this manner, or about one in six; 
thus the system reduced the mortality to one-tenth of what it 
had previously been. The practice was mainly confined to England, 
hut in 1762 the Empress Catherine of Russia sent to this country 
for a physician to inoculate her, and the ancestor of one of our 
county representatives —Baron Himsdale—earned his title by pro¬ 
ceeding to Russia, at considerable risk to himself, for that purpose. 
But after all under inoculation many children were disfigured and 
one in 300 or 400 cases died. 
Then came the age of Jenner. Dr. Jenner, a Berkeley physician, 
was aware of the fact which had been observed in several districts 
of Gloucestershire and elsewhere that those who caught a certain 
eruptive disease from cows in milking them were practically exempt 
from small-pox. He enquired in 1776 into these statements, and 
found that they were founded on fact, and he soon afterwards 
introduced vaccination. Of course the protection was not perfect, 
and lasted only a certain number of years, hut even after that time 
a person had the disease, if at all, in a much milder form. Objections 
were taken then to the introduction of vaccination, just as they are 
now to its being performed—the opposition at the present time seems 
to have become so great, that they had actually, after vaccination had 
been in use a hundred years, a Royal Commission sitting to enquire 
whether it really was of any service. Of course objections would he 
raised in a similar way to the introduction of inoculation for hydro¬ 
phobia, but he thought it would be generally admitted that M. 
Pasteur had made wonderful discoveries. 
