Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/269

 Rh the surgeons in several parts of the district, during my residence, had returned, to a considerable extent, to the practice of variolous inoculation, although they all practised vaccination at the same time. Several cases of second attacks of small-pox in the same person came under my observation, as well as a good many cases subsequent to vaccination.

According to the testimony of the older practitioners, the disease is incomparably less frequent than in their early experience. Although the district, taken as a whole, could never be said to have been entirely free from it, yet it could not be said to have been generally prevalent, in anything like its former violence, for the twenty years preceding the date of my inquiries. When existing, it was also found to be less fatal than in former years, probably owing to the improved method of treatment. All the older practitioners had met with cases of second attacks of small-pox in the same individual.

The greater frequency and fatality of small-pox in the district, previously to the introduction or general prevalence of vaccination, are shewn by the registers of St. Paul and St. Hilary. In the former, in a population of about 3000, the total deaths from small-pox, in the nineteen years anterior to 1814, were 89, or nearly one-tenth of the whole mortality; while in three years only, previously to the introduction, or at least general protecting influence of vaccination, viz. in 1795, 1802, and 1803, the deaths were 49, being more than during the remaining period. In the parish of St. Hilary, having a population under 1000, we find the number of deaths, in the twenty-eight years preceding 1805, to be 56,