[56] Vansweiten, 1209. 3.
[57] Medical Observations and Inquiries, vol. VI. p. 310, 319.
[58] Dissertations, vol. I. p. 326.
THE
NEW METHOD OF INOCULATING
FOR THE
SMALL-POX.
DELIVERED IN A LECTURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, ON THE 20TH OF FEBRUARY, 1781.
GENTLEMEN,
It must afford no small pleasure to a benevolent mind, in the midst of a war which daily makes so much havoc with the human species, to reflect that the small-pox, which once proved equally fatal to thousands, has been checked in its career, and in a great degree subdued, by the practice of INOCULATION.
It is foreign to my purpose to deliver to you the history of this art, and to mark the various steps that have attended its progress to its present state of improvement. We have yet to lament the want of uniformity and of equal success in the practice of it among physicians. A great number of pamphlets have been written upon the subject without exhausting it. There is still ample room left for the man of genius to exercise his talents for observation and reasoning upon it. The facts I mean to lay before you are so inconsiderable, compared with what still remain to be known upon this subject, that I have to request, when your knowledge in it is completed, that you would bury my name in silence, and forget that ever I ventured to lay a single stone in this part of the fabric of science.