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8
power certainly not equalled within my own recollection.
An examination of its history during the time it has been
so powerfully exerting its baneful force, must lead us to
regard with satisfaction the immense public benefit which
has accrued from the general practice of Vaccination. If
the exceptions had not occurred to the perfectly general
adoption of the introduction of the milder, but, in a preserving
sense, not less powerful disease, I firmly believe that
Small Pox would have had no place in the death registry.
The practice of inoculation, introduced to this country by
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, mitigated the severity of the
disease; but every case so treated became a creation of a
further means of extending the variolous contagion, so that
while private advantage was secured, in the substitution
generally of a mild form of the malady for one much more
severe, the public health became endangered; and although I
have not authentic facts before me in proof, could not possibly
have escaped injury.
The course and character of the disease is so much
altered when occurring after vaccination, that even in the
worst cases some of the distinctive features are lost. Small
Pox was in former times more exact in its periodical
changes, perhaps, than any other eruptive disease; now, it
is extremely difficult to prognosticate the changes which
take place in its career. But, happily, it is but seldom that
we have occasion to foretell any other than a propitious
termination. Did we but possess the means of employing a
power capable of combating with success other mortal epidemics,—for
instance, Cholera, or Scarlatina,—it would be
indeed hailed by the whole human race as a boon.
Indications of subsidence are already observable, and I
expect soon, in my usual reports, to be able to inform you