If fresh matter be applied long enough to the skin, there is no occasion for any wound at all. Let a bit of thread, about half an inch long, wet with the matter, be immediately applied to the arm, midway between the shoulder and the elbow, and covered with a piece of common sticking-plaster, and kept on for eight or ten days. This will seldom fail to communicate the disease.
Instead of multiplying arguments to recommend this practice, I shall beg leave to mention the case of my own son, at the time an only child. After giving him two gentle purges, I ordered the nurse to take a bit of thread which had been previously wet with fresh matter from a pock, and to lay it upon his arm, covering it with a piece of sticking-plaster. This remained on six or seven days, until it was rubbed off by accident. At the usual time smallpox made their appearance, and were exceedingly favourable. Surely this, which is all that is generally necessary, may be done without any skill in medicine.
Buchan appealed to the clergy for co-operation as inoculators--
The persons to whom we would chiefly recommend the performance of this operation are the clergy. Most of them know something of medicine. Almost all of them bleed, and can order a purge, which are all the qualifications necessary for the practice of inoculation.
No set of men have it so much in their power to render the practice of inoculation general as the clergy, the greatest opposition to it still arising from some scruples of conscience, which they alone can remove. I would recommend them not only to endeavour to remove the religious objections which weak minds have to this salutary practice, but to enjoin it as a duty, and to point out the danger of neglecting to make use of a means which Providence has put in our power for saving the lives of our offspring. Surely such parents as wilfully neglect the means of saving their children’s lives are as guilty as those who put them to death.
How familiar have vaccinators rendered this line of adjuration! If you do not comply with our prescription, and your children catch smallpox, then are you their murderers.
Here is another passage from Buchan, which with equal accuracy might apply to Vaccination--is indeed what is perpetually asserted to be the truth concerning Vaccination--