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as a preventive fluid was often employed which was not the true kind. It should also be observed, that while Vaccination was imperfectly understood, due attention was not paid by those who practised it in waiting the progress of the disease, to ascertain that their patients had received it into the constitution,-a point only to be determined by watching the successive changes of the pustules. And further, that the fluid for inoculation must be taking during that stage of the disease when it will be sure of its effect. A due regard to these observations will enable our readers to judge why so many failures have occurred, and must still occur, unless they resort to regular practitioners to receive Vaccination.

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It also should be remembered that great prejudices still prevail among uneducated persons as to the eminent advantages of this mode of inoculation. The prevailing dislike to Cow-pox, arising from a belief that gross-humours are thereby introduced into the constitution, can only be effectually removed by their own observation and experience. It is an established maxim among physicians, that no disease can communicate any other disease than itself; but it will not be sufficient to bring forward the opinion of the most learned men to show the absurdity of any popular prejudice, because those who are invited to adopt Vaccination have an undoubted right to satisfy themselves that it is innocent in itself, as well as sure in its effects.

We must allow time for the removal of doubt and suspicion. When those who are now prejudiced against Vaccination perceive that their opinions were unfounded-when they see the children of others, who have been thus protected from Small-pox, pass through the process with scarce any ailment, and grow up healthy and vigorous, and free from any supposed taint from Cow-pox,-they will surely bless the day when a discovery so invaluable was made, and hasten to secure to themselves and their children an exemption from that loathsome and dangerous disease, to which thousands fall victims by persisting in their incredulity.

In concluding these remarks, we are happy to lay before our readers a document of the highest authority in favour of Vaccination, which contains a most authentic and interesting statement of the general progress of the system in this kingdom, as well as other nations, to which the benefits of Dr. Jenner's discovery have been extended. , woll tad et tiones 3 EDITOR L.

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Copy of the REPORT to the Secretary of s State for the Home Department, from the National Vaccine Establishment.Dated 8th April 1819. -Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed.

To the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Sidmouth, Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, &c.

National Vaccine Establishment, Percy-Street, 8th April 1819. MY LORD, The Board have the honour of reporting to your Lordship, that during the year 1818, the number of persons vaccinated at the stations in London and the vicinity, have amounted to 6,289; and their

correspondents throughout the kingdom have reported that they have vaccinated 57,897. These numbers however are not to be considered as the whole; for many surgeons who are supplied with Vaccine Lymph from this Establishment, do not report the entire number of those whom they vaccinate.

From the first establishment of the Board in 1808, an annual increase has taken place in the demand for Vaccine Lymph, of which 50,116 charges have been distributed to the Public during the preceding year.

The Board have much satisfaction in laying before your Lordship unequivocal evidence of the increasing advantages of the Jennerian discovery for it appears from the Bills of Mortality of London, that instead of 2,000 deaths by Small-Pox, which were the annual average previous to the practice of Vaccination, there died last year only 421.

In addition to this gratifying decrease of the ravages of Small-Pox in the metropolis, the Board are also enabled to state, from authentic information, that its diminution has likewise been considerable in many other places. In the towns of Shrewsbury, Worksop, and Faversham, and in the city of Armagh, no case of Small-Pox has for some time occurred; and the Board are informed by the Secretary of Addinbroke's Hospital in Cambridge, a district where great impediments have been heretofore thrown in the way of Vaccination, that 8,000 persons were vaccinated during the last year. As an additional proof of the vast progress of Vaccination in the British possessions in India, the Board have much pleasure in noticing a communication from the Abbe Dubois, Catholic Missionary in the Mysore, in which he states that he has himself had the happiness to secure nearly a lac (above 98,000) of individuals from the Small-Pox, without one authenticated case of failure. By a return from Ceylon also, it appears that 23,464 persons were vaccinated in that Government alone during the year 1817.

It is a very singular fact that the Small-Pox was extinguished sixteen years ago in the parish of Mickleham, in Surrey, and has never appeared in it since this has been accomplished by Mr. Curtis, surgeon, at Dorking, who vaccinated periodically all the poor of the neighbourhood, by the direction and at the expense of the late Wm. Locke, Esq. of Norbury Park, whose beneficent scheme, after his decease, was laudably continued by his widow. Such praiseworthy examples, highly deserving general imitation, unequivocally evince what may be effected by a judi, cious application of the power of the Vaccine.

It will be gratifying to your Lordship to know, that independently of the continued distribution of Vaccine Lymph from this Board, to all parts of the British dominions, the reputation of its purity is such that applications for a supply are often made from foreign countries.

His Excellency Prince Esterhazy, Ambassador from the Austrian Court, lately requested some charges of lymph to vaccinate the children of the Imperial Family. These were immediately transmitted, and proved effective; since which, a fresh supply has been required to vaccinate the children of the Archduke Francis. Vaccine Lymph has also been transmitted to Carlsruhe, to the island of Madeira, to New South Wales, to Sierra Leone, to Otaheite, to Rio Janeiro; and thence has been forwarded to Bahia, Pernambuco, and again to New South Wales. From these favourable statements the Board have no serious deductions to make, although they feel it their duty candidly to communicate some unfortunate events-unfortunate more from their unfriendly impression upon the minds of many, than from any substantial doubts they can create of the efficacy of the vaccine.

Five cases have been reported to the Board, of vaccinated persons

who have subsequently died of small-pox. In one of these cases, it was clearly ascertained that the only vaccine vesicle which had been excited was disturbed and broken in its progress, which there is great reason for believing has been a frequent cause of the insecurity of Vaccination; in the other cases, no detail respecting the Vaccination could be obtained, and they were moreover all vaccinated at a period of time when the mode of vaccination, and the management of the vesicle, were not well understood.

In several parts of the United Kingdom, particularly near Edinburgh, an anomalous disease, bearing some resemblance to Small-pox, has appeared in many persons. It has been described by many professional gentlemen of great eminence and experience. From their statements it appears that this eruption attacked indiscriminately persons who had been previously vaccinated, who had had the Small-pox, or who had not gone through either disease.

Of whatever defined nature this eruption may be considered, it is highly gratifying to remark, that no death occurred in any person who had been previously vaccinated, neither was it in them so violent; whereas in many others it was malignant, and proved mortal to several. It has therefore been justly concluded, from the investigation which has been instituted in Edinburgh, that the circumstances which have oecurred in the history of this eruption more strongly confirm the utility of Vaccination.

As a diversity of opinion, however, has prevailed of the precise nature of this eruption among those who witnessed it, considerable alarm has been excited in the public mind. The Board are unable to form any very decided opinion upon this subject; because, in the cases where this varioloid disease is stated to have occurred subsequently to Small-pox, the symptoms of the Small-pox have not been detailed; and in cases where it followed the Vaccine, the particulars of the Vaccine process, except in a few instances, are omitted: but in these few, it appears that the Vaccine process had not been conducted on the plan recommended by this Board, and which experience has proved to be most efficacious.

In London, some eruptive cases have occurred in persons who had been previously vaccinated; these the Board have had opportunities of examining; and it has been discovered by the Directors that the eruption, in most instances, was the Chicken-pox; in a few, the mitigated Small-pox; and it should not be passed unnoticed, that in all these latter cases, Vaccination had been performed and conducted in the manner which was originally frequently practised, before the adoption of the superior method which has been recommended by the Board, and which they have taken much pains to inculcate in their printed directions.

For it is a fact which cannot be too strongly impressed upon the public, that there is a considerable difference of success in the different modes of inserting and conducting the Vaccine. Hence the Board are informed by some surgeons, that a portion of their vaccinated patients have been subsequently affected with the Small-pox, though in a mild form; while other surgeons state, that they have vaccinated many thousands without a single failure. As, however, the cases vaccinated at the stations of the Board are all registered, they possess the sure means of ascertaining the real effects of correct vaccination.

From the foundation of this establishment in the year 1808, to the present year, there have been vaccinated at these stations in London 52,253 persons. Only four of these are yet known to have had the Smallpox afterwards, and these were never very seriously ill. This trium

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phant success of the National Vaccine Establishment in London, where the small-pox infection is always unfortunately prevalent, proves decidedly both the superior virtues of the Vaccine, and the excellence of the method of practice adopted and recommended by the Board. They therefore feel it an imperious duty strongly to urge the medical profession at large to sacrifice their peculiar notions of practice, however ingenious, and to adopt literally that plan which by much experience has been found so effectual.

While there are still persons who can be found to question the efficacy of the Vaccine, it is proper to remark that in the course of the year, 15 cases have been reported to the Board, of small-pox attacking the same individual twice, two of which proved fatal.

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It is painful to the Board not to be able to close this report without again being obliged to call your Lordship's attention to the conduct of some men, who, as it appears, still continue the improper practice of small-pox inoculation. These persons insinuate themselves into families, increase their fears, and work upon their feelings and prejudices by distorted statements. They thus mainly contribute to the continuance of a highly malignant and fatal disease, to the injury too of those honourable practitioners who so meritoriously refuse to inoculate for the Small-pox.

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In their report of the year 1815, the Board adverted to the prosecu tions instituted against persons who had, either by means of inocu lation or by carrying about diseased patients, endangered the health and safety of the public.

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Those prosecutions had the effect of promulgating the law, which upon this particular subject had not before been enforced; and the measures of the Board operated beneficially in checking such injurious practices, not only in the metropolis, but also in some populous districts of the country, where an hostility to vaccination was combined with an obstinate determination to alarm and endanger the neighbourhood, by openly exposing children covered with the Small-pox.

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The Board, to the period of this their tenth annual report, have been continually more confirmed in their opinion as to the security of the Vaccine; the extension of which is, in this country alone, still obstructed by the misconduct of certain persons as already mentioned, complaints of which are still made frequently to the Board from respectable medical practitioners and others, in the hopes of obtaining redress. lup & 2292204 The Board therefore, feel it a duty to submit to his Majesty's Govern ment the propriety of encouraging the enforcement of the existing laws against the exposure of persons labouring under the Small-pox, as a mean, not only of preserving the community from variolous contagion, but of more generally diffusing the inestimable advantages of the Jennerian discovery.

J. LATHAM, President of the Royal College of Physicians.
H. AINSLIE,
it aid to yoruic

E. D. NEVINSON,

R. HARRISON,

* G. D. YEATS,

Censors of the Royal College of Physicians.

T. KEATE, Master of the Royal College of Surgeons.

D. DUNDAS,

T. FORSTER, Governors of the Royal College of Surgeons.

By Order of the Board,

6l6efb5 Juga yI9Z)

JAMES HERVEY, M.D. Registrar.

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[The following Essay is extracted from a popular Work, "The Sketch Book," lately published in London, under the fictitious name of Geoffrey Crayon, professing to be written in America, and considered to be the performance of Washington Irving, a native of that country,]

"Oh! friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,
Domestic life in rural pleasure pass'd !"-COWPER;

THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the English character, must not confine his observations to the metropolis. He must go forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must visit castles, villas, farm-houses, cottages; he must wander through parks and gardens; along hedges and green lanes; he must loiter about country churches; attend wakes and fairs, and other rural festivals; and cope with the people in all their conditions, and all their habits and humours.

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In some countries the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion of the nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and intelligent society, and the country is inhabited almost entirely by boorish peasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a mere gathering place, or general rendezvous, of the polite classes, where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gaiety and dissipation, and having indulged this kind of carnival, return again to the apparently more congenial habits of rural life. The various orders of society are therefore diffused over the whole surface of the kingdom, and the most retired neighbourhoods afford specimens of the different ranks.

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The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling. They possess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature, and a keen relish for the pleasures and employments of the country. This passion seems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born and brought up among brick walls and bustling streets, enter with facility into rural habits, and evince a tact for rural occupation. The merchant has his snug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where he often displays as much pride and zeal in the cultivation of his flower garden, and the maturing of his fruits, as he does in the conduct of his business, and the success of a commercial Even those less fortunate lives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive to have something that shall remind them of the green aspect of nature. In the most dark and dingy quarters of the city, the drawing-room window resembles frequently a bank of flowers; every spot capable of vegetation has its grass plot and flower bed; and every square its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, and and every squarefreshing gleaming with refreshing verdure.

individuals, who are doomed pass their

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