It may be communicated with safety to persons of every age and sex, and at all times and seasons of the year, with equal advantage. It does not produce eruptions, which scar and disfigure the face; and it is seldom, if ever, attended with any other marks of the disease than what appear on the arms from inoculation. So far from proving hurtful, delicate and sickly children are often improved in health by having passed through this complaint. Scarcely any remedies or attendance are required for the Cowpox, nor is there any necessity for a course of physic before or after the inoculation. The prejudices of the poor against inoculation for the Smallpox, by which thousands of lives have been annually saved,[117] have been often lamented; but if they suffer unjust prejudices to prevent their laying hold of the advantages now offered to them by the inoculation of the Cowpox, they will neglect the performance of a duty they owe to themselves, to their families, and to society at large. For surely it is little less than criminal to expose their helpless children to the attack of so terrible and fatal a malady as Smallpox when it may be readily avoided by the inoculation of so mild, simple, and safe a disease as that of the Cowpox. N.B.--All poor persons, whose affection for their families leads them to embrace this favourable opportunity, may have their children inoculated for the Cowpox at the Hospital and Dispensaries every day in the week (Sunday excepted) throughout the year. No time ought to be lost by the poor in freeing their families from the apprehension of the Smallpox, _which daily increases in frequency and malignity throughout this town_. This manifesto is an illustration of the unscrupulous and unwarrantable assertions with which the New Inoculation was introduced to the world. There is no question that many who were active in circulating these mendacities did so honestly, justified, as they thought, by medical authority. What is marvellous is the survival of the primitive fictions to the present day. It would seem that when the human mind acquires a certain _set_, something like a surgical operation is requisite to reverse it. We shall now see how the New Inoculation obtained this sudden popularity--a popularity so sudden that opposition had not time to organise itself. There were protests, and some raillery. In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for August, 1799, we find a correspondent saying-- There is a plan to mitigate Smallpox in the human species by passing it through a Cow. Now as everyone is not in possession of a Cow, I propose to pass it through animals that most people possess. I mean Cats; and I shall call it the Catpox. When my plan is matured, the ingenious shall hear further concerning it. And Pearson writing in 1802, when the success of cowpox appeared secure, observed--