But to return to the more immediate object of this proposition.

From the similarity of symptoms, both constitutional and local, between the cow-pox and the disease received from morbid matter generated by a horse, the common people in this neighbourhood, when infected with this disease, through a strange perversion of terms, frequently call it the cow-pox.  Let us suppose, then, such a malady to appear among some of the servants at a farm, and at the same time that the cow-pox were to break out among the cattle; and let us suppose, too, that some of the servants were infected in this way, and that others received the infection from the cows.  It would be recorded at the farm, and among the servants themselves wherever they might afterwards be dispersed, that they had all had the cow-pox.  But it is clear that an individual thus infected from the horse would neither be for a certainty secure himself, nor would he impart security to others were they inoculated by virus thus generated.  He still would be in danger of taking the smallpox.  Yet were this to happen before the nature of the cowpox be more maturely considered by the public my evidence on the subject might be depreciated unjustly.  For an exemplification of what is here advanced relative to the nature of the infection when received directly from the horse see Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, pp. 27, 28, 29, 30, and p. 35; and by way of further example, I beg leave to subjoin the following intelligence received from Mr. Fewster, Surgeon, of Thornbury, in this county, a gentleman perfectly well acquainted with the appearances of the cow-pox on the human subject: 

“William Morris, aged thirty-two, servant to Mr. Cox of Almondsbury, in this county, applied to me the 2d of April, 1798.  He told me that, four days before, be found a stiffness and swelling in both his hands, which were so painful it was with difficulty he continued his work; that he had been seized with pain in his head, small of the back, and limbs, and with frequent chilly fits succeeded by fever.  On examination I found him still affected with these symptoms, and that there was a great prostration of strength.  Many parts of his hands on the inside were chapped, and on the middle joint of the thumb of the right hand there was a small phagedenic ulcer, about the size of a large pea, discharging an ichorous fluid.  On the middle finger of the same hand there was another ulcer of a similar kind.  These sores were of a circular form, and he described their first appearance as being somewhat like blisters arising from a burn.  He complained of excessive pain, which extended up his arm into the axilla.  These symptoms and appearances of the sores were so exactly like the cow-pox that I pronounced he had taken the distemper from milking cows.  He assured me he had not milked a cow for more than half a year, and that his master’s cows had nothing the matter with them.  I then asked him if his master had