ECR 26 215
Reference code
ECR 26 215
Title
Cottisford and Fringford, Oxfordshire: Letter concerning cow pox vaccination
Level
Item
Date
14 August 1801
Content description
J.R. Greenhill, Cottisford, to [William Roberts, a fellow].
"Expecting Mr Woolley Bennet of Buckingham, brother to our friend, at dinner today, I was just sitting down to express our hopes (by him, as he will pass thro' Eton in his way to Thorpe next week) of Mrs Robert's recovery, which we had hoped would have been of an earlier date, when your obliging letter was brought to me. We sincerely congratulate her and you on the events having so happily taken place; and that a termination is at past put to so long a course of anxiety; which indeed I have often experienced myself, tho' never quite for such a length of time. I should have made an enquiry long ago into the state you were in, could I have met with any opportunity of conveying to you my neighbour's treatise on the cow pox; which I provided myself with, as we returned by Oxford, and where I was informed that there was no immediate communication between that place and Eton. I hope it will afford much satisfaction both to Mrs Roberts and yourself; as I understand you intend to inoculate some of your little folks with the vaccine matter. Your operator will, I hope, have been fully conversant in the practice, and be able to pronounce absolutely on the genuiness of the pustule: there is a spurious sort so much resembling the genuine, that is requires no small degree of experience to discriminate; the practice has suffered some discredit in a few instances in this neighbourhood, merely on this account. Were I to inoculate a child of my own with the cow pox, I would certainly repeat the operation, in due time afterwards, with the small pox, in order to be a more absolute certainty..."
"Expecting Mr Woolley Bennet of Buckingham, brother to our friend, at dinner today, I was just sitting down to express our hopes (by him, as he will pass thro' Eton in his way to Thorpe next week) of Mrs Robert's recovery, which we had hoped would have been of an earlier date, when your obliging letter was brought to me. We sincerely congratulate her and you on the events having so happily taken place; and that a termination is at past put to so long a course of anxiety; which indeed I have often experienced myself, tho' never quite for such a length of time. I should have made an enquiry long ago into the state you were in, could I have met with any opportunity of conveying to you my neighbour's treatise on the cow pox; which I provided myself with, as we returned by Oxford, and where I was informed that there was no immediate communication between that place and Eton. I hope it will afford much satisfaction both to Mrs Roberts and yourself; as I understand you intend to inoculate some of your little folks with the vaccine matter. Your operator will, I hope, have been fully conversant in the practice, and be able to pronounce absolutely on the genuiness of the pustule: there is a spurious sort so much resembling the genuine, that is requires no small degree of experience to discriminate; the practice has suffered some discredit in a few instances in this neighbourhood, merely on this account. Were I to inoculate a child of my own with the cow pox, I would certainly repeat the operation, in due time afterwards, with the small pox, in order to be a more absolute certainty..."
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