number of such cases lay among those whose vaccination was the oldest? Is this the fact? No. We find instances of small-pox after cow-pox at all periods, from a few months after vaccination up to many years; and on the contrary, grown-up women who were vaccinated on the first introduction of the practice, nursing their children for the small-pox, without catching it themselves.

To prove that the protecting power of vaccination lasts only a few years, would be the hardest stone that has been thrown at the name of Jenner; but hitherto the charge has not been proved. That small-pox after cow-pox is more common now than formerly, and among those who have been vaccinated many years than among those who have been vaccinated a few, for the reasons we have already stated, proves nothing. If among a number vaccinated lately and an equal number vaccinated long ago, a far larger proportion of the latter caught the small-pox than of the former, this would go to prove the fact; but no such case has ever been made out.

Let those who would abandon vaccination because it is not infallible, look the consequences of such conduct fairly in the face. Would they omit both inoculation and vaccination, and expose the nation unprotected to the natural small-pox, a disease which kills one-fourth of those who catch it, and disfigures the countenances, or ruins the health of a crowd of the survivors?—or would they return to small-pox inoculation, which renders the disease mild in those who are inoculated; but, by keeping up constant supplies of the contagion, spreads it continually among the uninoculated, and occasions a greater mortality than if inoculation was neglected?-or, lastly, will they continue vaccination, which affords perfect security from small-pox in an immense proportion of instances when it does not prevent it, deprives it of its danger-and permits a severe or a fatal disease in only a few rare instances?

The importance of the general question has occupied us longer than we intended, and delayed our notice of the interesting pamphlet the title of which stands at the head of this Article. There are many persons whose prejudices against vaccination are utterly insurmountable; they dwell on the few instances which they have known of small-pox after cow-pox, and forget the many in which the latter has afforded complete protection from the former; they dwell on a few instances of inoculated small-pox which were mild and ended prosperously, and forget that even the inoculated disease sometimes occasions death, disfigurement, or ruined health. We advise these unreasonable persons to mix a little wisdom with their folly, and if they insist on inflicting the small-pox on their infants, to adopt the method

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recommended by Dr. Ferguson in this pamphlet. If a person who has had neither cow-pox nor small-pox is first vaccinated, and a few days afterwards inoculated with the small-pox, the two diseases proceed together; but the cow-pox so completely curbs the small-pox as to deprive it of more than half its length and alt its danger. Of this curious and important fact Dr. Ferguson proposes to take advantage;-his object is, by vaccinating a few days before inoculating with the small-pox, to generate a disease as mild as chicken-pox, and as capable of protecting the patient from subsequent small-pox as full-length small-pox itself. The plan, the way in which he learnt it, and the whole developement of the scheme betray an observing, thoughtful, and judicious mind.

The incident which first led him to this view of the subject is very striking. There were three children in a poor family, two boys a few years old, and one infant at the breast; the two boys caught the small-pox-the mother, fearing that the infant, from its tender age, would sink under this formidable disease, consented to have it vaccinated, but it had already imbibed the small-pox, of which the eruption came out a few days after vaccination. But although the cow-pox was too late altogether to prevent the small-pox, it effectually curbed its violence, rendering it so mild and short that it resembled chicken-pox, so that, although the infant had not sickened till some time after the two elder boys, it was quite well several days before they were convalescent.

'Reflecting,' says Dr. Ferguson, on these three cases, it was evident to me that that form of small-pox known by the name of the modified small-pox, or the varioloid disease, was the mildest. I thought then that if I could generate it artificially, I should produce a disease which would upite all the certainty of small-pox in defending the constitution from any subsequent attacks of this horrible malady with the mildness of the chicken-pox. I saw, too, that the experiment had already been made in the case of the infant, for it had been exposed to the contagion of the small-pox, and also to that of the cow-pox, and that the result was a mild form of disease.'

The proof that, when cow-pox and small-pox meet at the same time and in the same person, the former restrains the violence of the latter, and converts it into a disease as trifling as chicken-pox, is corroborated by numerous experiments accidentally made before the nature of the process was understood. When vaccination was first discovered, Dr. Woodville vaccinated 500 persons in the Small-Pox Hospital, and soon afterwards inoculated several of them with the small-pox. many (about three-fifths) of these patients there came out an eruption resembling that of small-pox; most of them had no fever, and the eruption disappeared in a few days. The disease

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thus produced was so short and slight that Dr. Woodville took it for the effect of vaccination. It is now certain that these patients had caught the small-pox about the time when they were vaccinated, and that the eruption was that of small-pox restrained by cow-pox. A few years afterwards Dr. Willan published some similar observations, together with the true explanation. He found that if the small-pox was inoculated within a week after vaccination, the patient had an eruption of small-pox pustules; but that if the inoculation was delayed till the ninth day after vaccination it produced no effect.

Thus, the fact had been ascertained by numerous experiments, but it remained for Dr. Ferguson to employ it as a means of restraining the violence of small-pox; and for this he deserves great credit. These little steps in thought are great steps in the progress of human power; even Jenner's discovery consisted only in employing that as an art which was already known by numerous accidental experiments.

Before adopting the scheme two questions will occur to the considerate reader-1st. Whether previous vaccination may be depended on for abbreviating and ameliorating small-pox?—2d. Whether this abbreviated small-pox secures the patient from subsequent small-pox, like small-pox in the ordinary form? As to the first of these questions, the restraining efficacy of previous vaccination has been proved by ample experience. It rests not merely on the cases which have been witnessed by Dr. Ferguson, but on the experiments of Dr. Willan, and on the numerous cases which occurred to Dr. Woodville in the Small-pox Hospital. As to the second of these questions, we have all the evidence which the nature of the subject admits of. From the introduction of vaccination down to the present time, cases of abbreviated small-pox after cow-pox have been continually occurring; every one of these is an instance of the disease which Dr. Ferguson proposes to generate, yet we do not remember to have heard of one which was ever followed by a subsequent attack of the disease.

When the small-pox is inoculated, medicines are used to prepare the constitution, and to diminish as much as possible the violence and danger of the disease; but for these objects there are no medicines equal to a previous vaccination.

We do not recommend Dr. Ferguson's scheme as a substitute for vaccination-there is this decisive reason against its general adoption, that, like common inoculation, it would keep up a perpetual supply of the small-pox contagion, and thus augment the mortality occasioned by the small-pox: but the large class of extremely cautious persons we have already alluded to, cannot find elsewhere a guide either so ingenious or so safe as this author.

ART.

ART. XIII. 1. Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. R. B. Sheridan. By John Watkins, LL.D. 2 vols.

1817.

2. Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. R. B. Sheridan. By Thomas Moore, Esq. 2 vols. 3. Sheridaniana.

1825.

1 vol. London. 1826.

THE life of MR. SHERIDAN by Dr. Watkins is a work neither of high pretension nor of felicitous execution. The author does not boast of having had access to any rare or peculiar sources of information: nor does he quote, throughout the whole of his performance, a single private letter or document of any kind. While the death of Sheridan was fresh in the public recollection, he collected the details of his career from newspapers, annual registers, and other periodical works of his time, and threw them together much in the style of those historians who are described, in common parlance, as writing for the booksellers-which is, we are afraid-in that department of letters at all events-the same` thing as writing for the hour. The doctor, who appears to be himself a strenuous Tory, seasoned the political part of his narrative with a sufficiently copious condiment of high Tory maxims and reflections, and of course condemned much more frequently than applauded the public conduct of his hero. Biographers are so generally eulogists, that one is surprized to find a continued strain of censure running all through a work of this description; but as Doctor Watkins happened to agree in his politics with the immense majority of the English nation, no general displeasure certainly was excited against him by this particular feature of his work. Of Sheridan, as a dramatist, he embodied common-place criticism in magniloquent and ponderous paragraphs; and although he gave copious, and in general well-selected, extracts from his printed speeches, his dislike to the politician rendered him no very favourable critic of the orator.

Nobody could pretend to consider such a book as doing justice to the remarkable person of whom it treated; yet few competent judges, we think, were disposed to complain seriously of any thing but its literary criticism-for they appreciated the difficulties which must have embarrassed even a far abler writer than Dr. Watkins in the execution of such a work so soon after the death of Sheridan, and while so many of the distinguished persons with whom he had been connected in public and in private life were still alive, and, according to the Homeric amplification, Txov DEPXOVTES. There was a certain tone of candour and liberality, wherever the personal character of the man was touched upon, which pleased every body, and the more so in consequence of the openness with which the biographer expressed, on all occasions,

his own political principles and predilections. Indeed there was throughout a delicacy and forbearance on private topics and towards individuals, which some of his successors in the same walk might have done well to imitate. On the whole the book was well received, and passed, we believe, through several editions.

The announcement of a rival work, from the pen of Mr. Moore —an Irishman, a wit, a poet, and a Whig-must, under any circumstances, have excited a much higher degree of interest than could ever have attended either the promise or the performance of his predecessor. But Mr. Moore, (if the public be right in ascribing to him certain poetical effusions of a semi-political cast,) not contented to rely on the unassisted effect of his own reputation, condescended to aid it by a precautionary disparagement of Dr. Watkins. In the Fudge Family,' for example, the Doctor's not very notorious name was introduced in a style of contemptuous sarcasm, which, at the time when that little volume appeared, considerably puzzled us.. The announcement of Mr. Moore's own work solved the mystery of this persecution of an eminently good-natured and unpretending brother of the trade,' though we are still rather doubtful, both as to the discretion which dictated, and the taste which directed it. We find a like bitterness diffused over the pages of the present work; and though the vituperation is, in certain instances, not only unnecessary but unjust, we confess that, on a comparison of the two histories, Mr. Moore's apprehensions of his rival do not seem to have been altogether so imaginary as we should à priori have thought them.

Mr. Moore states in his preface that the family of Mr. Sheridan supplied him with whatever materials they had in their possession and that he must have had abundant access to other valuable sources of information could not be doubted by any one who knew the society in which he is accustomed to mingle. Accordingly frequent references to the authority of personal friends of Mr. Sheridan occur throughout the volumes before us. It is nevertheless certain that, in many important particulars, Mr. Moore's narrative is entirely erroneous; and it is equally certainand more to be regretted-that, in some of these instances, he might have escaped censure had he adhered to the statements of the rival whom he so sedulously depreciates.

We have heard it suggested that the prosaic Dr. Watkins may have exerted an unfavourable influence over the style of Mr. Moore's book, as well as over a considerable portion of its substance: but, although we can well believe that Mr. Moore made every effort to eschew any resemblance to Dr. Watkins—we cannot wholly account for the taste of his historical composition upon this hypothesis.