Richmond Enquirer

FOR THE ENQUIRER.

VACCINATION.

Of late, a number of people, especially children and youths, have been vaccinated, and still more would have made application for it, if they were perfectly satisfied it is an infallible preventative of the Small-Pox. Many questions have been proposed to me, by different persons at different times, in respect to the prophylactic nature of Cow-Pox, which I will answer by briefly stating the trials made ten or twelve years ago, and the result of which has satisfied me, in conjunction with what I read and heard before and since on the subject.

My opinion is that a person who has had the Cow-Pox is no more liable to the Small-Pox, than he is to a second attack of this.

1. I vaccinated all Mr. E's. family, white and black, excepting one young lady. They went through the Cow-Pox as usual. I then inoculated the young lady with matter taken from a violent case of confluent Small-Pox. She took the disease in a mild form and got safely over it. The rest of the family, who had been vaccinated, staid with and waited upon her, but were not affected by the Small-Pox.

2. I vaccinated two children, and they went through the disease as usual. Some time after, a family, who had just moved into town, to live in the same house, had the Small-Pox in the natural way. Those who had been vaccinated were put to sleep in the same bed with others who had the Small-Pox, but escaped unaffected. This trial of the prophylactic nature of Cow-Pox, became known to many of the neighbors; it gave great satisfaction, and produced decisive effects on the minds of the people who were before in suspense.

3. A child, on the breast, was vaccinated, and in the course of some months afterwards the mother, who had been inoculated for the Small-Pox, many years before by a physician, and who was supposed to have had it, was affected with the small-pox, as well as many others in the neighborhood. The small-pox proved of the confluent kind; her case was dangerous, and for several days the event appeared doubtful. She, however, recovered. The physician who had inoculated this woman was colonel of his county; at the head of every ball and fashionable amusement, drinking parties, &c. He loved every thing but a studious life and was counted a great physician. I was informed of eighteen of the people he had inoculated for the small-pox in one spring, besides this woman, who had taken the small-pox that time in the natural way. Had he used the matter of the chicken-pox instead of that of the small-pox?

The child in question, sucked the mother all the time she was ill of the small-pox, as well as before and afterwards, and was not affected. This case, as well as the two preceding ones, seems conclusively to prove that the Cow-Pox is a preventative of the Small-Pox.

Besides these experiments, and the incalculable number made by different physicians, in various parts of the world and which are detailed in medical books, I, as well as every person who has been extensively engaged for many years in the practice of medicine, have seen people of all ages and conditions in life, who had been vaccinated, exposed to the small-pox in every form and under every possible circumstance, without being affected by it. The conclusion therefore, forced upon my mind, is, that there is no more danger of taking the small-pox, after being vaccinated, than there is of taking the small-pox a second time.

But I have seen instances of the spurious pustule, since I came to practice in Virginia, mistaken for the vaccine pustule. There is no physician, however eminent in his profession, that could adequately judge of the characteristics of the vaccine pustule the first time he sees one. Discrimination is acquired by experience, and people who suppose that vaccine matter is sure to produce the vaccine pustule in every instance; or that judge of the reality of the Cow-Pox, from the degree of sickness it occasions, and that no knowledge is necessary to vaccinate rightly, but what people possess who never studied medicine in general and the subject of Vaccination in particular, must not only unnecessarily torture their patients, but will find themselves when too late, egregiously mistaken.

JOHN MORGAN.