The rapid acceptance and spread of Jenner's doctrines speedily silenced all cavillers except that small minority of incredulous and fanatical opponents who are always to be found refusing to accept any truth that does not coincide with their own ignorant and prejudiced views. The frightful mortality and appalling effects of small-pox prior to the introduction of vaccination were indeed such as to impel men to grasp at any means that held out a probability of escape from the scourge. In the present day the public can form but a faint idea of the ravages of small-pox before Jenner's time. The records of historians, not only of our own country, but throughout the world, teem with the most appalling accounts. Dr. Lettsom calculated that 210,000 fell victims to it annually in Europe. Bernouilli, an Italian, believed that not less than 15,000,000 of human victims were deprived of life by it every twenty-five years, _i. e._, 600,000 annually. In Russia 2,000,000 were cut off in one year. In Asia, Africa, and South America, whole cities and districts were depopulated. Nor was it only the actual mortality which rendered it so appalling. The records of the Institution for the Indigent Blind in our own country showed that three-fourths of the objects relieved had lost their sight by small-pox, while the number of persons with pitted and scarred faces and deformed features that were met with in the streets testified to the frightful ordeal that they had passed through. Multitudes died of diseases set up by this plague, or from ruined constitutions which it entailed. And what, of all this, it may be asked, do we now see? Is it not a rare thing to meet a person whose face is scarred and his features deformed by small-pox? How few persons can cite instances among their acquaintance of those who have died of small-pox after having been properly vaccinated? Is it necessary to go into statistics and elaborate investigations of the bills of mortality of the present day in order to be convinced that, as compared with the records of anti-vaccine times, we have indeed cause to bless the memory of Jenner?