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tendency; and I am confirmed in such opinion by the
cases noted in the following extract from my own contribution
(June 13th, 1863,) to the series of papers above
referred to—
" Until December of last year, small-pox had for a long series of years been
absent from this parish and adjoining hamlet. The first of about a dozen cases
noted between the latter part of 1862 and the present time, occurred to an
unvaccinated labouring man, who had just before removed into the parish. This
case proved fatal in the Small-Pox Hospital, to which insti ution the patient was
removed shortly after the appearance of the disease, and the death was, of course,
registered there. The remains of the poor man, however, were brought from
the Hospital to be buried in this neighbourhood. A brother of the deceased
living in Putney attended the funeral, and contracted the disease; but having
accidentally heard that this man was also unvaccinated, I persuaded him, although
symptoms of the malady were then plainly visible, to submit himself at once to
the operation, and a more decided proof ot its protective power I could not have
received. The two diseases—the vaccine and the varioloid—went through their
course together, and presented all the characteristic phenomena of each, but the
one so modified the other that the patient recovered without a bad symptom.
" The only other fatal case of which I am cognizant occurred to an unvaccinated
nurse-child, nine months old, who it appears was not born in the parish, and
whose unprotected condition was therefore unknown and unsusper ted until too
late to remedy the evil. Two other persons residing in the same house in which
this infant died, viz., a boy of 12 and a girl of 16, shortly afterwards took the
disease. Whilst attending the infant, I noticed this boy and girl looking very ill,
and, suspecting the cause, I urged the performance of vaccination on thern both.
The boy submitted, being then unprotected, and he had the varioloid disease
very slightly, and made a good and speedy recovery. Not so, however, the girl;
who, relying on the efficiency of her vaccination in infancy (though I had great
doubts whether the operation had ever been performed), was much opposed to
its performance, and the consequence has been she has experienced a prolonged
and painful convalescence; and will, doubtless, carry about with her to her latest
hour the most unmistakeable facial indications of the virulence of the malady
from which she has suffered.
" I could cite many cases of a like kind from the records of a practice of nearly
thirty years, during the greater part of which time I have performed the functions
of a public vaccinator; but the above are referred to as having recently
afforded to my own mind strong evidence that vaccination, submitted to even at
the eleventh hour, does largely protect against the virulence and fatality of smallpox,
if it accomplishes nothing more. My own experience is that, when properly
performed, carefully inspected on the eighth day, and pronounced by a skilled