inated a child with virus received
from Dr. Jenner, and in communicating the success of this experiment,
he mentions that Dr. Lister, formerly of the Small-Pox Hospital, and
himself, are convinced of the efficacy of the cow-pox. In November
of the same year, Dr. Pearson published his "Inquiry," containing the
testimony of numerous practitioners in different parts of the kingdom,
to the efficacy of the practice. Dr. HAYGARTH, who was so conspicuous
in exposing the follies of Perkinism, was among the very earliest
to express his opinion in favor of vaccination. In 1801, Dr. Lettsom
mentions the circumstance "as being to the honor of the medical
professors, that they have very generally encouraged this salutary
practice, although it is certainly calculated to lessen their pecuniary
advantages by its tendency to extirpate a fertile source of professional
practice."

In the same year the Medical Committee of Paris spoke of vaccination in
a public letter, as "the most brilliant and most important discovery
of the eighteenth century." The Directors of a Society for the
Extermination of the Small-Pox, in a Report dated October 1st, 1807,
"congratulate the public on the very favorable opinion which the Royal
College of Physicians of London, after a most minute and laborious
investigation made by the command of his Majesty, have a second time
expressed on the subject of vaccination, in their Report laid before the
House of Commons, in the last session of Parliament; in consequence of
which the sum of twenty thousand pounds was voted to Dr. Jenner, as
a remuneration for his discovery, in addition to ten thousand pounds
before granted." (In June, 1802.)

These and similar accusations, so often brought up against the Medical
Profession, are only one mode in which is manifested a spirit of
opposition not merely to medical science, but to all science, and to all
sound knowledge. It is a spirit which neither understands itself nor the
object at which it is aiming. It gropes among the loose records of the
past, and the floating fables of the moment, to glean a few truths or
falsehoods tending to prove, if they prove anything, that the persons
who have passed their lives in the study of a branch of knowledge
the very essence of which must always consist in long and accurate
observation, are less competent to judge of new doctrines in their own
department than the rest of the community. It belongs to the clown in
society, the destructiv