Many instances might be produced of unjust charges against Inoculation, alledged by those who have opposed the practice: but I should not at this time, and in this country, where the prejudices are pretty well removed, publish any case of the following kind, if the inadvertence of a translator had not made it necessary, in defence of my own character.

Dr. Baylies, an ingenious and learned English physician, had been called from Dresden to Berlin, in 1774, to inoculate some families of persons of condition; and the King of Prussia so far approved the practice, as to appoint him his physician.

After the most perfect success with several patients, a child who had been inoculated by him, was, about two months after, seized with a distemper which proved mortal, and the physicians who attended, asserted that the child died of the small-pox.

In vindication of his own character, and the practice of Inoculation, Dr. Baylies had the case of this child stated, and copies of it were transmitted to Dr. Watson, Dr. Archer, and myself, requesting our separate opinions.7

The ungenerous treatment Dr. Baylies met with in this, and other respects, induced him to publish a tract on the occasion, in French, in which our opinions were inserted; and he was so obliging as to send me one of them.8

I was greatly surprized to find what I had written, so erroneously translated, as to misrepresent my meaning in a most essential point. I therefore wrote to Dr. Baylies, and complained of the injury, requesting that he would endeavour to do me justice, in the manner he thought most effectual.

Notwithstanding this was generously complied with by Dr. Baylies, as far as he was able, I have reason to think, that some of the first copies are dispersed, and remain uncorrected; which I hope will be deemed a sufficient reason for publishing the following correspondence.