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reasoning. If, on the other hand, the reasonable conclusion,
from an experience of more than half a century of the practice of
vaccination, be that the vaccinated show less liability to attack
by the disease of Small-Pox, or when attacked, suffer less fatally
or severely, these facts cannot be displaced by showing Jenner
and his associates erred in some respects both in their observations
and in the conclusions they founded upon them. It would, in our
opinion, in that case, have been proved that however mistaken
they may have been in other respects, they were right at least on
this cardinal point, that the vaccinated enjoyed a position in
relation to Small-Pox superior to that of unvaccinated persons.
We think it would be as little reasonable to reject the conclusion
to which the experience of vaccination led us, because Jenner and
other early advocates of the practice made mistakes, as it would
be to believe in its protective influence on account of the credit
which seemed due to their judgement or observations, in spite
of the lessons to the contrary taught by a lengthened experience
of the practice. In saying this, we must not be supposed to
admit that all the criticisms to which Jenner and his associates
have been subjected are sound, or to give our adhesion to them;
we have desired only to point out why it seems to us of comparatively
little importance whether they be so or not, and to
assign to them their true place among the considerations which
ought to guide us in determining the question whether or no
vaccination has a protective influence.
We proceed, then, to sum up the evidence bearing upon the
question whether vaccination has any, and, if so, what protective
influence in relation to Small-Pox, and to state the conclusions
at which we have arrived.
We find that the period which immediately followed the
introduction of the practice of vaccination was characterised in all
countries in which the practice prevailed by a marked though
irregular diminution of Small-Pox mortality, and that this
diminution of mortality, when compared with the century