Had these experiments been conducted in a large city, or in a
populous neighbourhood, some doubts might have been entertained;
but here, where population is thin, and where such an event as a
person's having had the smallpox is always faithfully recorded,
as risk of inaccuracy in this particular can arise.
CASE II.--Sarah Portlock, of this place, was infected with the
cow-pox when a servant at a farmer's in the neighbourhood,
twenty-seven years ago. [Footnote: I have purposely selected
several cases in which the disease had appeared at a very distant
period previous to the experiments made with variolous matter, to
shew that the change produced in the constitution is not affected
by time.]
In the year 1792, conceiving herself, from this circumstance,
secure from the infection of the smallpox, she nursed one of her
own children who had accidentally caught the disease, but no
indisposition ensued. During the time she remained in the
infected room, variolous matter was inserted into both her arms,
but without any further effect than in the preceding case.
CASE III.--John Phillips, a tradesman of this town, had the cow-
pox at so early a period as nine years of age. At the age of
sixty-two I inoculated him, and was very careful in selecting
matter in its most active state. It was taken from the arm of a
boy just before the commencement of the eruptive fever, and
instantly inserted. It very speedily produced a sting-like feel
in the part. An efflorescence appeared, which on the fourth day
was rather extensive, and some degree of pain and stiffness were
felt about the shoulder; but on the fifth day these symptoms
began to disappear, and in a day or two after went entirely off,
without producing any effect on the system.
CASE IV.--Mary Barge, of Woodford, in this parish, was inoculated
with variolous matter in the year 1791. An efflorescence of a
palish red colour soon appeared about the parts where the matter
was inserted, and spread itself rather extensively, but died away
in a few days without producing any variolous symptoms.
[Footnote: It is remarkable that variolous matter, when the
system is disposed to reject it, should excite inflammation on
the part to which it is applied more speedily than when it
produces the smallpox. Indeed, it becomes almost a criterion by
which we can determine whether the infection will be received or
not. It seems as if a change, which endures through life, had
been produced in the action, or disposition to action, in the
vessels of the skin; and it is remarkable, too, that whether this
change has been effected by the smallpox or the cow-pox that the
disposition to sudden cuticular inflammation is the same on the
application of variolous matter.] She has since been repeatedly
employed as a nurse to smallpox patients, without experiencing
any ill consequences. This woman had the cow-pox when she lived
in the service of a farmer in this parish thirty-one years
before.
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