How did they remain unscathed? The question is simple, but it is crucial. If smallpox were like fire, and men, women, and children like fuel, why did not all burn? Under what prophylaxy did they abide secure? Again in this connection, we must not lose sight of the magic of faith. Things being equal, two persons exposed to smallpox, one confident that he was invulnerable through vaccination, and the other apprehensive of danger, the chances are, that the fearful would be attacked whilst the fearless would have his faith justified in immunity. In considerations thus obvious it is not difficult to understand how the testimony delivered to the Committee had a semblance as of veracious Nature. Any one who has studied the history of remedies, or the various quackeries within his own observation, will know how easy it is to conjure up testimony, with asseverations presumptuous to question, which by-and-by are gradually discredited and ultimately disappear in forgetfulness. I have, therefore, no disposition to be hard on the men of 1802. From our vantage of experience we see how they were led astray, and recognise the pressure of the influences under which they acted. Moreover a remedy that bore the promise of relief from the pest of smallpox inoculation came with strong seduction. What a pest that inoculation was, how it was loathed, and how it was submitted to under the persuasion of duty are written at large in the domestic memoirs of last century. Every mother among the upper and middle classes was persuaded that it was necessary for her children to undergo the variolous ordeal--an ordeal that involved the deliberate introduction of smallpox into her household. It was hateful, it was intolerable, and yet it had to be endured! The doctors minimised the risks to the uttermost, but what they really believed plainly appeared when vaccination presented itself as an alternative. Then smallpox inoculation was denounced by its former practitioners with a fervour that contrasted painfully with their antecedent professions; whilst parents heard with indescribable satisfaction that absolute life-long security from smallpox was henceforward insured at the price of a trifling operation attended by no peril whatever, and with distinct benefit to health. To make the contrast clear I subjoin copy of a hand-bill that was posted on walls and circulated by thousands in London and the country at the time of which I write, 1801-2. A TABLE SHEWING THE ADVANTAGES OF VACCINE INOCULATION. _The Natural _The Inoculated _The Inoculated Smallpox._ Smallpox._ Cowpock._