A letter in reply to the report of the surgeons of the Vaccine Institution, Edinburgh : with an appendix, containing a variety of interesting letters on the subject of vaccination, and including a correspondence with Dr. Duncan, Dr. Lee, and Mr. Bryce : from which also the public will be able to appreciate the authority of the surgeons of the Vaccine Institution, and to form a correct opinion of the whole subject / by Thomas Brown.
- Date:
- 1809
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A letter in reply to the report of the surgeons of the Vaccine Institution, Edinburgh : with an appendix, containing a variety of interesting letters on the subject of vaccination, and including a correspondence with Dr. Duncan, Dr. Lee, and Mr. Bryce : from which also the public will be able to appreciate the authority of the surgeons of the Vaccine Institution, and to form a correct opinion of the whole subject / by Thomas Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![I do asstire you, that at present I have «ow:—your opinions and statements CIO not seem to have made such an impression on the public mind as to render this necessary. Those who feel an interest in the subject, will, on companng your statements with those of other authors, readily learn how to appreciate them, so that I think the work may be fairly left to itself,, especially when it is considered that your opinion, that the security afford- ed by vaccination against the small-pox is only temporary, was long ago agitated by the opponents of that practice, and was also fully and satisfac torily answered by Dr Willan and others, although it may not have been convenient for you to have noticed this in your book. I cannot, however, close this correspondence, without giving you the tollowmg information for your serious consideration. • I am ready to give you the names of forty or fifty children who were vaccinated by my colleagues, at the Dispensary here, and by myself, in the years 1801 and 1802, that is fully seven and eight years ago, the most of whom have been lately visited personally by us, among the middling and lowest orders of the inhabitants of this city, and have hitherto resisted the •mall-pox infection, although freely exposed to the epidemic disease within these few months. The following melancholy intelligence was given us at the Dispensary here, within these ten days:—The wife of Thomas Rutherford, a carter, residing at the Sheriif-Brae, Leith, brought a young infant to the Dispensary to be vaccinated ; she informed us, that the small-pox was very frequent in her neighbourhood, and that she had, within these three months, lost a rhild by that disease. On our asking why she had not brought that child to be vaccinated long ago, (for he was two years old when he died), she answered, with tears and bitter reproaches, that she certainly would'have done so, for that she had two children inoculated with the cow-pox at the Dispensary, one six and a half years ago, and the other about four and a half years ago, but that she had heard some reports against the cow-pox, and had therefore neglected doing it; but she added, that now she and all ]ier neighbours were convinced, in spite of the stories that wicked people spread against the cow-pox, that this inoculation certainly prevented the small-pox, because her two children (vaccinated as above mentioned, and who, you will observe, were beyond that period, which you have fixed as that of security against the epidemic small-pox. See your book, page 300), had slept in the same bed, eat out of the same dish, and used the same spoon with his brother, during his whole illness, and yet had entirely escaped the small-pox. At the parish-school at Newton, w^hcre Brown, the 24th case in your book, appears to have caught the small-pox, there were several other chil- dren attending, who had been five, six, seven years, vaccinated, and equal- ly exposed to the sraall-pox with him, yet they altogether resisted the dis- ease. This fact you either did, or should have known, but perhaps it was not convenient for you to mention it in your book.* At page 255 of your book you state, that, as nearly, if not entirely the * Mr Bryce cannot surely have perused my book with the smallest at- tention, otherwise he must have perceived no less than six cases connected, either with Newton school or the vicinity. 3](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21928277_0106.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
