Information respecting the origin, progress, and efficacy of the kine pock inoculation, in effectually and forever securing a person from the small-pox / extracted from a treatise entitled "A prospect of exterminating the small-pox." Written in the year 1802.

  • Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754-1846.
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Information respecting the origin, progress, and efficacy of the kine pock inoculation, in effectually and forever securing a person from the small-pox / extracted from a treatise entitled "A prospect of exterminating the small-pox." Written in the year 1802. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to submit to the test of the small-pox, when most of theiu took that disorder. This brought vaccination into disrepute, so that the authority of the town of Randolph allowed the in¬ habitants to inoculate for small-pox, in March 1808. While Dr. Bailey and Dr. Copp undertook to inoculate all who dis¬ believed the efficacy of the kine-pock, in Randolpn, Dr. E. Bissell* and S. Fancher vaccinated, at the same time and place, such as retained a confidence in the preventive power of the kine-pock. This difference of opinion and practice among the physicians had an unpleasant effect on the society of the place. It disturbed the harmony of the town ; cre¬ ated divisions ; and engendered ill humour in families, where husband and wife, father and son, brothers and sisters were, sometimes, opposed in opinion to each other. To put an end to this division of sentiment, the Fathers of the town wisely determined to bring the matter to the test of the most rigid experiment ; and to establish the facts one way or the other. A town meeting was therefore called ; and a respec¬ table committee appointed to superintend the experiment of testing with small-pox seventy five persons, men, women*, . and children, who had received the kine-pock from Dr. Bis¬ sell, and Fancher. The committee repaired, on the day appointed, to the pest- house, where were a number of patients heavily burdened with small-pox. The two small-pox Doctors, and the two kine-pock Doctors attended the experiment, each side inspir¬ ed with very different hopes and wishes. Then the seventy jive men> women, and children were inoculated with the small¬ pox matter, taken warm from the pustules of people cover¬ ed with them. Six days after the inoculation, the committee and the physicians repaired again to the pest-house, when all acknowledged, by the appearance of the pustule, that the small-pox matter had proved itself to be good. In six days more they met again ; and on a careful examination of the arms of each, and every one of the men, women, and children, * From matter supplied by Dr. Waterhouse,