“
covery of the circulation of the blood was a beautiful addition to our knowledge of the animal economy. but on a review of
the practice of medecine before & since that epoch, I do not see any great amelioration which has been derived from that discovery.
you have erased from the Calendar of human afflictions one of it’s greatest. yours is the comfortable reflection that mankind
can never forget that you have lived. future nations will know by history only that the loathsome small pox has existed &
by you has been extirpated. Accept the most fervent wishes for your health & happiness, & assurances of the greatest respect
& consideration.
”
Edward Jenner, 1749-1823, English physician, was the discoverer of vaccination. George C. Jenner was his nephew.
[954]
87
Not in the Manuscript Catalogue.
1815 Catalogue, page 39. no. 12, Aikin on the cow pox, 12mo.
AIKIN,
Charles Rochemont.
A Concise View of all the most important Facts which hath hitherto appeared concerning the Cow-Pox. By C. R. Aikin, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
London: Printed for
R. Phillips; sold by
T. Hurst, and
H. D. Symonds, and by all other booksellers;
Davis, Wilks, & Taylor, printers,
1801.
RM786 .A29
First Edition. Sm. 8vo. 56 leaves, engraved tinted frontispiece dated October 10, 1800, advertisements on the last leaf, with the
printers’ imprint at the foot of the verso.
This edition not in the
Surgeon General’s Library Catalogue (which has the second edition of the same year).
The Library of Congress catalogues credit Jefferson with a copy of the first edition only, as above. This was sent to him
by Dr. Waterhouse, with a letter printed in full in the latter’s work
A Prospect of Exterminating the Small Pox, Part II
, 1802 [no. 946 above]. The letter reads in part: “. . . I here send a little book, compiled by Mr. Aikin, Surgeon of London; being perhaps, the best manual for the inoculator
extant . . .”
Jefferson acknowledged this letter and the pamphlets from Washington on June 26, 1801.
Jefferson also owned a copy of the second edition, sent to him by John Vaughan, who wrote from Philadelphia on December 9,
1801: “. . . A Second Edition of Aikin is published here, with an important appendix; I shall have the pleasure of sending you a
copy as soon as I can get it from the publisher, who is getting it bound. I enclose the advertisement, with the information,
that the letter of Yours alluded to, is the one to D
r. Waterhouse, which was found in an English publication--The fear that you might see the Adver
t. & should for one moment conceive, that I had permitted your letter to me, to be made use of, has induced me to trouble you
with the present . . .”
On December 21 Vaughan sent the book: “I have the pleasure of sending you a Philadelphia Edition of Aikin, with an appendix, containing some important Documents
from Letsom &c--I have also sent a short abstract of some leading points in D’Husson’s work on this subject, printed this
year at Paris--He was one of the Paris Medical Committee of the Vaccination Hospital . . .”
This may be the copy that Jefferson sent to Dr. Currie on December 25 (the day after its receipt from Vaughan): “
I inclose you a publication of Aiken’s on the Cowpox . . .”
Charles Rochemont Aikin, 1775-1847, English physician and chemist, was the nephew of Mrs. Barbauld and the “Little Charles” of her
Early Lessons
. The
Concise View was reprinted in 1801 in England and in Charlestown, Boston, and was subsequently translated into French and German.
[955]
