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]
Catalogue details

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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    method had been improved by the Suttons, a disease which killed one out of four, was transmuted into a disease which killed only one in several hundreds. If this had been the only result, the benefit would have been unmingled, and great in a degree almost incredible, but it brought with it an evil still greater than the good; by perpetually keeping up a supply of the contagion, this disease, which had been propagated only at intervals before, was now propagated perpetually, far and wide, among those unprotected by inoculation; the annual mortality was greatly increased, and that, which all had hoped to find a blessing, turned out to be a national curse. It is not surprizing, therefore, that when Jenner disclosed the wonderful truth, that the artificial production of a trifling and harmless disorder would impart a charmed life over which this loathsome disease should have no power, his discovery was soon hailed with enthusiasm by almost the whole medical profession. In the general exultation, its infallibility was over-rated ; the ad- vocates for vaccination affirmed that it was an infallible protection from the small-pox, and every instance of small-pox after cow- pox was explained away. Such cases are now no longer to be denied. Patients have caught the small-pox who had been vac- cinated by the most skilful vaccinators, even by Jenner himself, and it is generally acknowledged that out of a number of vacci- nated persons, some do not resist the contagion of the small-pox. The time has now arrived when all intemperate excitement on the subject is at an end. Vaccination has been tried on a vast scale for seven-and-twenty years, and we have a stock of experi- ence whereon to determine (not with mathematical precision, yet with enough for the guidance of our conduct) to what extent vaccination has disappointed our expectations, and whether this disappointment is sufficient to induce us to abandon the practice altogether. This general question resolves itself into two particular ones: 1st. What is the proportion of the vaccinated who are liable to the infection of small-pox; 2d. Do they suffer when infected as severely as those who have never been vaccinated, or is the small- pox in their case mitigated and converted into a harmless disease ? From the introduction of vaccination down to the present time, numerous instances have been recorded of an eruptive disease, similar to small-pox, in persons previously vaccinated. But though these records afford specimens of this occurrence, they throw no light on the question of its frequency; we pass them over therefore, and select a few instances in which the security afforded bv vaccination has been tried on a large scale, and the first *,
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