And this coincidently with extensive Vaccination to which apparently there was no active opposition! We have also to remember in this connection the statement of Professor Alexander Monro in 1765, that “the inhabitants of Scotland generally have Smallpox in their infancy or childhood; very few adults being seen in this disease”; and that in Edinburgh, with conditions strongly favourable to Smallpox, the mortality from the disease was on an average little more than a hundred a year. The Edinburgh physicians knew nothing practically of Vaccination, and we see how the Surgeons, who did know, shaped their evidence. The Dublin College of Physicians echoed the fashionable opinion “that Cowpox Inoculation was safe, and fully answered its purpose.” They were “willing to allow that doubtful cases had occurred of Smallpox after Vaccination, but on minute investigation, these supposed instances originated generally in misrepresentation, or the difficulty of discriminating between Smallpox and other eruptions.” Rather awkwardly, seeing how the opposite opinion was in vogue, they professed their faith in Variolous Inoculation-- The Smallpox is rendered a much less formidable disease in Ireland by the frequency of Inoculation for it, than in other parts of His Majesty’s dominions, where prejudices against Inoculation have prevailed. Hence parents, not unnaturally, object to the introduction of a new disease, in the shape of Vaccination, preferring to trust to the practice with the mildness and safety of which they are well acquainted. The Dublin College of Surgeons showed themselves more fully abreast of the time. They had nothing to say for Inoculation, but testified their confidence in Vaccination, and how its practice was increasing in Ireland. From 1800 to 1806 a total of 14,335 had been “inoculated with vaccine infection” at the Dublin institutions, and many elsewhere-- Cowpox has been found to be a mild disease, and rarely attended with danger, or any alarming symptom, and _the few cases of Smallpox which have occurred in Ireland after supposed Vaccination_, have been satisfactorily proved _to have arisen from accidental circumstances_. Arisen from accidental circumstances! Thus was the divine illumination of experience veiled and denied! Fortified with this budget of questionable evidence, the Government proceeded to claim from the House of Commons a second endowment for Jenner. FOOTNOTE: [138] _Review of Report on Vaccination._ By Benjamin Moseley. London, 1808. CHAPTER XVI. JENNER RELIEVED--1807.