Had these experiments been conducted in a large city, or in a populous neighbourhood, some doubts might have been entertained; but here, where population is thin, and where such an event as a person’s having had the smallpox is always faithfully recorded, as risk of inaccuracy in this particular can arise.

Case ii.—­Sarah Portlock, of this place, was infected with the cow-pox when a servant at a farmer’s in the neighbourhood, twenty-seven years ago. [Footnote:  I have purposely selected several cases in which the disease had appeared at a very distant period previous to the experiments made with variolous matter, to shew that the change produced in the constitution is not affected by time.]

In the year 1792, conceiving herself, from this circumstance, secure from the infection of the smallpox, she nursed one of her own children who had accidentally caught the disease, but no indisposition ensued.  During the time she remained in the infected room, variolous matter was inserted into both her arms, but without any further effect than in the preceding case.

Case iii.—­John Phillips, a tradesman of this town, had the cow-pox at so early a period as nine years of age.  At the age of sixty-two I inoculated him, and was very careful in selecting matter in its most active state.  It was taken from the arm of a boy just before the commencement of the eruptive fever, and instantly inserted.  It very speedily produced a sting-like feel in the part.  An efflorescence appeared, which on the fourth day was rather extensive, and some degree of pain and stiffness were felt about the shoulder; but on the fifth day these symptoms began to disappear, and in a day or two after went entirely off, without producing any effect on the system.

Case iv.—­Mary Barge, of Woodford, in this parish, was inoculated with variolous matter in the year 1791.  An efflorescence of a palish red colour soon appeared about the parts where the matter was inserted, and spread itself rather extensively, but died away in a few days without producing any variolous symptoms. [Footnote:  It is remarkable that variolous matter, when the system is disposed to reject it, should excite inflammation on the part to which it is applied more speedily than when it produces the smallpox.  Indeed, it becomes almost a criterion by which we can determine whether the infection will be received or not.  It seems as if a change, which endures through life, had been produced in the action, or disposition to action, in the vessels of the skin; and it is remarkable, too, that whether this change has been effected by the smallpox or the cow-pox that the disposition to sudden cuticular inflammation is the same on the application of variolous matter.] She has since been repeatedly employed as a nurse to smallpox patients, without experiencing any ill consequences.  This woman had the cow-pox when she lived in the service of a farmer in this parish thirty-one years before.