TO' EDWARD JENNER, M.D. F.R.S. &c. &c. &c. MY DEAR FRIEND, As no man before you had ever conceived the possibility of exterminating a distemper, your plan for annihilating the most fatal contagion that ever infested the earth occasioned much astonishment, and drew forth, as is usual with works of genius, abundance of controversial productions. For, among the practitioners of the healing arts, Hygeia found enemies ; and Disease and Death, friends. The aid of others being indispensable for the accomplishment of your beneficent design, I, who have long been engaged in endeavouring to promote it, resolved to write the Histories of the Small Pox and of the Vaccine, that by displaying to the Public the baneful effects of the one, and the benign consequences of the other, the value of your surpassing discovery might be justly estimated. Accept then of this work, with all its imperfections, as a proof; at least, of my zeal for your fame; and of my ardour for the success of an invention calculated to rescue from misery and death, not only a large proportion of those human beings who now exist, but also of those who shall see the light in succession, down to the most remote periods of time. Whilst I breathe, I shall remain, with the highest esteem, your Faithful Friend, CONDUIT-STREET, London, JAMES MOORE. THE CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER XI. THE HISTORY OF THE SMALL POX. CHAP. I. VARIOUS OPINIONS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SMALL POX. INFE NFECTIOUS diseases spring up in obscurity, and extend indefinitely: but if opposed with judgment, they might, like empires, be controled; and would decline and fall. The Small Pox has past through the first stages, and is now sinking into the last. Yet some lovers of paradoxes have maintained, that this malady, and the Measles, with which it was at first confounded, were coeval with the human race; and were described under different names by Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, Ætius, and other antient medical writers. The last assertion was urged briefly, but positively B |