Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/11

Rh were induced by this last report, to declare, by a great majority of votes, that inoculation deserved to be tolerated. The parliament, however have hitherto not recalled their first order; the practice remains under the same unnatural interdiction; and it is only out of the walls of Paris, and especially in the provinces, that the people are suffered to save their lives in their own way.

Both to reclaim the thinking part of Paris, and to vindicate his own operations from the contemptuous treatment of his antagonists, Dr. Gatti, at my request, published the present Essay. Uncertain of its effect upon that lively and volatile nation, who received inoculation upon trust, and upon trust rejected it, he was desirous, by this translation of his work, to appeal to their neighbours, in hopes that, if they approve, his method will in time get the better of prejudice and clamour.

Indeed the English have already decided in his favour. Inoculation is very near universally, in this island, what he wished it in France. The choice of the matter, the manner of the operation, the simplicity of the treatment, the attention to amusements, and the injunction of exercise, are so many points, in which his practice coincides with that which is here generally recommended.

Had Dr. Dimsdale's performance (in which this doctrine, for some time industriously concealed by interested operators, was first broughbrought [sic]