A Letter to Sir Henry Halford, bart : proposing a method of inoculating the small-pox which deprives it of all its danger, but preserves all its power of preventing a second attack / by R. Ferguson.

Date:
[1826]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A Letter to Sir Henry Halford, bart : proposing a method of inoculating the small-pox which deprives it of all its danger, but preserves all its power of preventing a second attack / by R. Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Art. XU.—Jl Letter to Sir Henry Ha/ford, Bait. Preside/it of the College of Physicians, proposing a Method of inoculating the Small-pox ivhich deprives it of all its Danger, but preserves all its Power of preventing a second Attack. By R. Ferguson, M. D. Member of the College of Physicians of London and Ediuburgh. 1825. A BOUT twenty years ago, when it was proposed to purify the •£*• medical profession from quackery and ignorance by legis- lative enactments, the late Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh published a letter on the subject, in which he remarked that ' England is a free country, and the freedom which every free-born Englishman chiefly values, is the freedom of doing what is foolish and wrong, and going to the devil his own way.' This is strikingly exempli- fied in the present state of vaccination in Great Britain, compared with its state in other countries of Europe. Iu the latter, general vaccination was ordered by government; no one who had had neither cow-pox nor small-pox could be confirmed, put to school, apprenticed, or married. Small-pox inoculation was prohibited; if it appeared in any house, that house was put under quarantine; and in one territory no person with small-pox was allowed to enter it. By such means the mortality from this disease in 1818 had been prodigiously lessened. In Copenhagen, it had been re- duced from 5500 during 12 years to 158 during 16 years. In Prussia, it had been reduced from 40,000 annually to less than 3000; and in Berlin in 1819 only 25 persons died of this disease. In Bavaria only 5 persons died of small-pox in eleven years, and in the principality of Anspach it was completely exter- minated. In England, on the other hand,—in England, the native country of this splendid and invaluable discovery, where every man acts on these subjects as he likes, crowds of the poor go un- vaccinated; they are permitted not only to imbibe the small-pox themselves, but to go abroad and scatter the venom on those whom they meet. A few years ago it broke out in Norwich, and cairied off more persons in one year, than had ever been destroyed iu that city by any one disease, except the plague. A similar epidemic raged at Edinburgh; and last year it destroyed within one of 1300 persons in the London bills of mortality. Before the introduction of inoculation, the small-pox was the most loathsome and fatal disease with which Great Britain was afflicted. It killed about one out of four of those whom it attacked, and left many of the survivors with blinded eyes, scarred faces, and ruined constitutions. When, therefore, inocu- lation was introduced into this island, it seemed a prodigious improvement; by this simple contrivance, especially after the method ••