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practised among them more extensively than ever it was before;
and that the College thinks it to be highly salutory to the human
race." From this date to the end of the century inoculation was
widely diffused, though to varying degrees, in different districts;
the practice doubtless paved the way for the later acceptance of
vaccination. The latter came to replace the former method, and
by the Act of 1840, sec.8, the practice of inoculation became a
penal offence.
Now the practice of inoculation was based on the belief that
one attack of Small-Pox protected from subsequent attack those
who recovered. And it was argued that the artificially-inoculated
disease, though usually far less severe than the natural disease,
yet afforded a similar immunity. It is neither necessary nor
profitable to discuss at any length the various theories that have
been advanced to account for such immunity; suffice it to say
there exists, and has always existed, a belief, shared by medical
writers, that in the case of many infectious diseases one survived
attack affords a certain amount of protection against a second
attack.
The earlier writers on Small-Pox appear to have held that
second attacks of the disease undoubtedly, occurred and not
unfrequently. The view that second attacks of Small-Pox
occurred was held by Sydenham, also by Diemerbroek, who
observed that the eruption was more severe in second attacks
than the first. The case of Louis XV. has been often quoted;
he had a first attack at fourteen, and died of a second at sixtyfour.
During the inoculation period the possibility of second
Small-Pox was emphatically denied by several writers. After the
introduction of vaccination the controversy which took place over
its relative merits when compared with those of inoculation
brought to light numerous instances of second Small-Pox in the
same individual. Jenner collected more than a thousand cases of
the kind. Moore says, " For some years the periodical and other
medical publications teemed with cases of Small-Pox occurring