Inoculation was, however, objected to, because sometimes the person
operated on took the disease in its violent form, and died from the
results.
The fact, however, remained that people who had been inoculated were not
liable to take the disease again, and so much good resulted that the
physicians were constantly seeking a means of inoculating that would
insure only a mild form of the disease.
The problem was at last solved by the great English physician, Edward
Jenner, in 1798.
He found that a form of small-pox was prevalent among cows, and that by
taking the germs of this disease, which was called cow-pox, and putting
them into the blood of human beings, he could produce a mild form of
small-pox, which never assumed a dangerous character, and yet prevented
the person treated from taking the real deadly small-pox.
From this experiment vaccination, as we know it to-day, resulted. The
practice was given this name in France; the word is derived from
_vacca_, the Latin for cow.
Since vaccination became general, the decrease in the rate of deaths
from small-pox has been wonderful, and there has not been one serious
epidemic where the practice has been followed.
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