Daily National Intelligencer

National Intelligencer.

FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.

VACCINATION

Messrs. Editors:

It may not be amiss, at this particular period, to call the attention of the citizens of Washington and Georgetown to this invaluable preventive of the most loathsome disease which ever existed.

In conversation with a highly respectable gentleman, a few days since, he observed, "This vaccination we resort to as a custom, a matter of course, although it seems that it is good for nothing."

Having been uniformly a friend to the cow pox, from its introduction to the present period, and having practised it with invariable success, I was impressed with more regret than astonishment to find that similar ideas with those of my friend were too prevalent. Where we hear ignorant persons, who cannot believe that so great an effect can result from so trifling a cause, say that they have no faith in vaccination, we need not be surprised.

But, if doubts and fears are excited in the minds of influential and respectable characters in society; nay, when we find them calling for small pox inoculation, from a thorough conviction of the inefficacy of the Jennerian discovery, I must be pardoned for troubling you to convey a few crude ideas, imperfectly expressed, to the public, through the medium of your generally perused gazette.

It seems, then, after an experience of twenty two years, during which period the mass of evidence in favor of the vaccine disease has been accumulating with a force and rapidity unparallelled; after millions have been vaccinated and tested: after every enemy of cow pock has been beaten under foot; after the small pox has been almost extirpated; that the cause of its gradual and uniform extinction has ceased to operate, or has been fixed on such loose and inexplicable grounds as to be unworthy of support and confidence.

Surely this cannot be. A wise and merciful Creator has not been thus sporting with the hopes of his creatures.

But if this vaccination is so effectual, how comes it that the small pox has appeared in the District? Of all reasons in the world, I will give one which is least to be expected; namely, because the people have not been vaccinated. I repeat it, that those who have taken the small pox have never been properly vaccinated; for those who have been vaccinated by medical men, and were properly attended to, have invariably escaped small pox, and after having, many of them, been exposed to it in various ways. There may have been one or two exceptions adduced; these, fellow-citizens, are probably so, and not clear cases.

What! has no person taken the small pox after vaccination? Where is this man's wife, whose arm was so sore, after having vaccinated herself with a pin? Where is my neighbor's child, who was vaccinated by doctor such a one, and who never saw it after it was done, but who said, from what he had heard, the child had the cow pock well? Where is Mr. this man's negro whose master sent him once to the doctor, who vaccinated him, and the disease took effect, and the master, with a sharp needle, took enough of matter to inoculate the rest of his family and servants? Why, this man's wife, and my neighbor's child, and this man's negro, are all down with the small pox.

Now, I ask, where is the proof that these persons had cow pox? Not a shadow of evidence; and yet such is the nature of almost every case which has been adduced against the cow pox, except those where chicken pox has been mistaken for small pox. Let every case be fairly stated and proved, and then I will be convinced; but, until then, I can never surrender my faith, at the shrine of professional neglect or general inattention to vaccination.

But if those vaccinated do not take the small pox now, the kine pock must be renewed every four, five, or seven years. I deny this assertion. And why? Because it has no support from experience.

Go to a Gloucestershire dairy man or milk maid, and tell them this idle tale, and they will laugh, and tell you that they had the cow pox thirty, forty, or fifty years ago, and they defy you to give them the small pox. Again; did not a celebrated physician in Philadelphia declare, that Jenner himself says that the effects of vaccination do not continue longer than seven years? I do not know what the Philadelphia doctor may have said: this much I do know, that if every case of small pox, after reputed or real vaccination, is cried aloud and published to the discredit of the latter, I should have met with this renunciation of a deliberate opinion in every medical work and newspaper. I am satisfied that Jenner never has said so; and if he does, I do not believe him, for there are hundreds around me who have been ten and fifteen years vaccinated, and I defy any person to give them small pox.

But, you say after real vaccination, and thus acknowledge that small pox does occur after kine pock. Yes; I do admit this to be a fact; and I can prove, from unquestionable authority, that a greater number of persons have the small pox twice than instances can be found of small pox after vaccination. One gentleman, of undoubted veracity and respectability, knows two or three instances of persons having small pox twice; and who can bring as many, where the testimony is as unexceptionable to the fact, that, after complete vaccination, have had small pox.

The amount, then, of this argument is, that persons are more liable to two attacks of small pox than to one after cow pock.

Again; did not Jenner vaccinate the children of a very distinguished gentleman, now a resident in this District, and have they not all, three or four in number, had the small pox? Admit it; and what does this exception prove against the general rule, against the overwhelming strength of the character of cow pock? The small pox in these children was very slight; and as this obtains in all the cases where the small pox occurs after imperfect vaccination, I ask, is it not more reasonable to attribute the result of the cases to some defect in the particular circumstances of the vaccination of those children than to suffer so small a consideration to influence us, when five times as many hundreds of thousands of instances can be adduced to prove the contrary. Nor will I admit the difficulty to be great in deciding on perfect vaccination; on the contrary, when a medical man is properly attentive to the progress of a case of cow pock, he may, with as much certainty as any human decision will admit of, pronounce that case to be safe from small pox for ninety-nine years, at least.

But, reader, miserably as vaccination may have been practised in the District, I believe it would be found to be a fact, that if the faculty were to endeavor to render the small pox general in the three cities, they could not effect it. No, not if a fortune was the fee. Now what is the reason? Ask Vaccination.

What, then, do the citizens expect from Vaccination? A most unreasonable effect, viz. that one end shall uniformly, invariably and infallibly, obtain. To this I will only reply, that when perfection is required, admitted, or proved, to exist in any department of science, I will yield the point. On this subject Dr. Moore observes, that, even in mixed mathematics, though the demonstrations are universally true in theory; yet when the principles are put in practice, failures are frequent; for it is impossible to form figures, and to mould matter, conformably to ideal perfection. Since invariable success is denied to the mathematical arts, is it to be expected in medicine, &c?

To this I will add, does this infallibility of result obtain in small pox itself, by rendering every person permanently secure from a second attack? Certainly not.

In France, two millions seven hundred and seventy-one thousand subjects, after being properly vaccinated, were tested, and seven took the small pox. In England, results equally favorable have been realised; and in America truth has been not less triumphant. In a word—ascertain the number said to have had small pox after vaccination; then allow for neglect on the part of the medical attendant: for the palpable ignorance of persons who vaccinate themselves and each other; for mistakes in distinguishing severe chicken from slight small pox; for peculiarities in constitutions; and I will pledge myself that a candid mind will acknowledge, that of all general rules, that which admits of fewest exceptions is, that cow pox will answer the warmest expectations of judicious philanthropists.

Let, then, the citizens have unbounded confidence in vaccination. But let them be really vaccinated, and by a medical man, who is, or ought to be, a competent judge; and who, generally speaking, alone can be. Let them send for a physician to vaccinate them and their families; let them not attempt it themselves. Altho' a medical man, I am shielded from an imputation of interested motives, when I declare that it is the most troublesome, the least profitable, and at the same time the most delightful part of our duty. For every lovely rose-blush which encircles the genuine vaccine pustule, is a halo of triumph which the healing art has gained over the deadliest foe to the health, happiness and existence of man. The wreath of philanthropy would indeed wither, and humanity weep, if the noblest of its laurels is lost, in the ephemeral influence of the Jennerian discovery.

And let the services of the medical man extend freely and fully to the poor, for it is a blessing which every physician who possesses a spark of benevolence will distribute without money and without price.

JENNER.

Georgetown, 29th Oct. 1818.