Thomas Jefferson Papers

To Thomas Jefferson from John Vaughan, 9 December 1801

From John Vaughan

Philad: Decr: 9. 1801

D Sir.

I have to apologize for the manner in which I sent down the last Small Pox matter for Dr Gantt I must have lost two days, in retaining it in order to have acompanied it with a letter

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 Dr Waterhouse, which was found in an English publication—The fear that you might see the Advert: & 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—Vaccination is beginning to spread fast here—Several Practitioners have commenced.

I remain with respect Your obedient Servant

Jn Vaughan

RC (DLC); at head of text: “His Excellency Thomas Jefferson”; endorsed by TJ as received 11 Dec. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure not found, but see below.

Small pox matter for Dr Gantt: see Vaughan to TJ, 19 Nov.

Second edition of Aikin: Charles R. Aikin’s Jennerian Discovery; or, A concise view of all the most important facts which have hitherto appeared concerning the Vaccine or Cow-Pock was, with a slightly expanded title, the Philadelphia edition of his work that had already been published in London and Charlestown, Massachusetts. The appendix was Edward Jenner’s history of smallpox vaccine, published in London under the title, On The Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation (Philadelphia, 1801; Shaw-Shoemaker description begins Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, comps., American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801–1819, New York, 1958–63, 22 vols. description ends , No. 25). See also Vol. 34:277n; Vol. 35:430, 490–1.

An advertisement of 8 Dec. for the “just published” Jennerian Discovery appeared in the Philadelphia newspaper Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, with the announcement that prefixed to the book were “the recommendations of Doctors RUSH and COX, And a letter from Mr. JEFFERSON.” Vaughan was quick to reassure TJ that the letter of yours alluded to was TJ to Benjamin Waterhouse, 25 Dec. 1800, which appeared in John Coakley Lettsom’s Observations on the Cow-Pock, published in London in 1801, and not TJ’s letter to Vaughan of 5 Nov., which TJ had declined to have published (Vol. 35:424–5, 698–9, 709–10, 722–3).

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