1 8
2 After eight days, upon calling on them, I found a young man of
3 about twenty years of age, in agony, in consequence of con-
4 fluent small-pox, which eruption had taken place on the
5 evening of the vaccination. He was the only person in the house
6 on whom the vaccination had failed, on account of the man
7 having carried on his shoulders a dead body that was infected
8 with the natural small-pox ; thus the lymph failed, by the counter-
9 agency of the contagion. The rest of the family enjoyed excellent
10 health, and were saved through the medium of vaccination.
11 There is an opinion prevalent, that vaccination will only keep
12 off the small-pox for a period of twenty years. I was (if I am not
13 mistaken) vaccinated in my native country, in the year 1800, with
14 such an excellent lymph (not crust), that I treated a great many
15 cases of small-pox, such as lately occurred in the years 1848 and
16 1849, at Lahore, without being affected by the disease myself,
17 and that without having been a second time vaccinated. Never-
18 theless, if the second or third vaccination is of no use, it does no
19 injury to the constitution. In one year I got from English phy-
20 sicians, lymph of quite different qualities, some from Umbala,
21 and some from Delhi; the former was of a good quality, but the
22 latter was of a very bad one, as the pustules sprang rapidly
23 up and vanished in a very short time; neither was the areola of
24 them red enough, which accounted for many of those whom I
25 vaccinated catching the small-pox. I therefore discontinued to
26 vaccinate with the matter from Delhi, after I had received some
27 of a better quality from Umbala.
28 At Tripoli, I met with the then new Governor Barber, who
29 although of very low birth, had managed to get possession of
30 the fortress, and afterwards of the town itself, by fraud and
31 cunning. He was a short-necked man, thickset, inclined to
32 apoplexy (Habitus apoplecticus), and, in consequence of his
33 sedentary life, was troubled with hemorrhoids and obstructions.
34 He consulted me, and when I ordered him to apply a clyster, he
35 measured me wildly with his eyes, as if I had ordered him some
36 dangerous remedy ; I repented having done so. I remembered
37 afterwards, that the Arabian physicians, although aware of the