Virginia Argus

[The following is extracted from the third Number of "The Philadelphia Medical Museum," conducted by John Redman Coxe, M. D. of Philadelphia, and just published by Mr. Thomas Dobson, at No. 41, South Second Street.]

The following valuable extract from a Paris paper, (the Gazette Nationale ou le Moniteur Universel, for Oct. 4, 1804) will doubtless be read with the highest satisfaction by the friends of vaccination throughout America, as an ample proof, in addition to former testimonials, of the security obtained by that practice against the small pox.

"His excellency the minister of the interior, has communicated to the central society of the vaccine established near him, the result of a counter-proof which by the concurrence of circumstances accompanying it, ought to make an epoch in the history of vaccination.

"Six black children, the first who were vaccinated in the Isle de La Reunion (Isle de Bourbon) and whose infection afterwards served for more than 500 other individuals, were embarked in the vessel, the young Caroline, (infected with the small pox) and carried to one of the Isles des Seychelles, where the vessel was obliged to perform quarantine. These six children remained three months on board, constantly placed in the focus of the infection; and pains were taken to make them live, eat and sleep with the infected. They were also, during the quarantine, twice inoculated for the small pox, each time with large incisions in both arms.

It is stated by the register, daily kept, that these six children having slept under the bed clothes of the persons having the small pox, in contact with their pustules, eating and drinking out of the same utensils, having been twice inoculated from those, who afterwards fell victims to their disorder, were preserved from all contagion, and continue at the present time in perfect health.

"This counter-proof is perhaps the strongest in the history of vaccination, from the particular circumstance, that these six children after reaching the place of quarantine, lived for 15 days in the midst of twenty blacks in the confluent small pox, of whom six are dead; of twenty to twenty-five other blacks in the state of scabbing, desiccation and convalescence, seven of which number died before the vessel arrived; and all were contained between decks of a small vessel, in a space of 8 feet by 10 or 12. This counter-proof merits a place in the immense collection of useful experiments made in Europe upon vaccination; it fulfils moreover, the important end proposed by government, and it confirms in the most unqualified manner the anti-variolic property, which the numerous trials made by the most distinguished physicians had attached to the new inoculation."

It is to be hoped that after reading the above, even the most sceptical will be convinced, & that stricter attention to the anomalies of the disease, will serve to explain the supposed cases of subsequent small pox; and enable us to guard against their future recurrence.