Such was Cobbett’s case against vaccination, and I ask, Was he not justified in his opposition? He saw vaccination introduced to the world as an infallible preventive of smallpox, and he lived to see the claim gradually minimised until reduced to that of making smallpox milder! Even thus abated, he had to stigmatise the claim as a last shuffle of quackery. It is asserted to this day, that vaccination makes smallpox milder, but the pretence is exploded whenever we demand, How do you know? In any case, or in any number of cases of smallpox, Who can define the severity that has been reduced by vaccination? any more than if I were to assert that vaccination intensifies smallpox, it would be impossible to confute me. We can only meet unverifiable assertion with indifference or contempt. If it pleases people to believe in metempsychosis or the constitution of the moon in green cheese, the wise leave them to the enjoyment of their humour. On the other hand, I have to remark, that smallpox is a disease of wide range of intensity, from an ailment almost trivial to one invariably fatal; and this wide range of intensity was as characteristic of the disease before as since the introduction of vaccination. On what pretext then are mild cases of smallpox attributed to the influence of vaccination? There are mild and malignant cases of smallpox alike among the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and not unfrequently when the vaccinated and unvaccinated are found in approximate conditions, as in the same household, it is the unvaccinated who are most lightly afflicted, or who make the better recovery.