Jenks's Portland Gazette

Medical.

From the Newyork Gazette.

Communication on the Cow-Pox.

WE have already given an account of Drs. Jenner and Pearson's publication on the Cow-Pox, which tended to establish the important fact, that those who have had that disease, which never proves fatal, and which may always be so managed as never to disfigure the patient, are not capable of afterwards taking the small-pox infection--a fact, which, if properly followed up, promises fair to extirpate the latter disease, to which more have fallen victims than to the pestilence itself. Drs. Pearson, Jenner, and Woodville, with a zeal that does them great honor, have since bestowed much attention and labour in ascertaining by proper trials, how far it is prudent to persevere in substituting a disease that has hitherto appeared no ways dangerous, for one that so often proves mortal; and, we are happy to add, with a success equal to the most sanguine expectations that could have been formed: In consequence of which the following circular letter has been addressed to the gentlemen of the faculty:

Leicester-Square, March 12, 1799.

Sir,

I HOPE you will pardon me for taking the liberty to inform you, by way of additional evidence to the testimonies I have published on the subject of the Cow Pox, that upwards of one hundred and sixty patients, from two weeks to forty years of age, principally infants, have been inoculated, since the twentieth of January last, by Dr. Woodville, and myself Separately. I shall, at present, only communicate the following observations:--

I. Not one mortal case occurred.--2. Not one of the patients was considered to be dangerously ill.--3. Altho the extreme cases of the severe kind, which ordinarily occur in the same number of cases in the inoculated small pox, did not occur in the above practice and altho many of the patients were even more lightly disordered constitutionally, yet the whole amount of the constitutional illness seemed to be as great as in the same number of patients in the inoculated small pox.--4. None of the patients (namely, about sixty) inoculated for the small-pox, subsequently to the vaccine disease, took the infection.--5. One of the most important facts is, that the local affection in the inoculated part, on the whole, was less considerable, and of shorter duration than in the inoculated small pox.--6. In many of the cases eruptions on the body appeared, some of which could not be distinguished from the small pox I have sent the matter of the cow pox pustule on the thread enclosed, in order if you approve of the inquiry to inoculate with it; and I entreat you to favour with the result of your trials: But I must trouble you to apply the test of inoculating with various matter subsequently to the vaccine disorder.

I have the honor to be, &c. &c.

G. PEARSON.