To Thomas Jefferson from Jean Baptiste Emonnot, 5 April 1803
From Jean Baptiste Emonnot
Paris 5 avril 1803.
15 Germinal an XI.
Monsieur Le Président
La Société de Médecine de Paris, par L’organe de sa commission de Vaccine, à L’honneur de Vous offrir un resultat partiel de Ses recherches relatives à L’inoculation nouvelle et L’abrégé de Ses Correspondances chez presque toutes Les nations policées.
La Société Vous devait cet hommage à plus d’un titre, Monsieur Le Président, à vous qui par L’ascendant de vos Lumieres, non moins que par L’influence de votre Suprême autorité avez Si puissamment contribué à accréditer La vaccine chez cette heureuse portion de l’humanité commise à vos Soins.
Veuillez donc, Monsieur Le Président, agréer ce Léger don comme une expression de La gratitude publique et comme Le temoignage de notre Profond respect.
Pour La Société de Médecine de Paris
Emonnot DM.
Secretaire de La commission de Vaccine
de la Société.
Editors’ Translation
Paris, 5 Apr. 1803
15 Germinal Year XI
Mister President,
The Society of Medicine of Paris, on behalf of its Commission on Vaccines, has the honor of presenting you with a partial result of its research concerning the new inoculations and a summary of its correspondence with almost all civilized countries.
The society owed you this honor on more grounds than one, Mister President, you who have so strongly contributed, by the power of your enlightened views, no less than by the influence of your supreme authority, to accrediting vaccine among that fortunate share of humankind entrusted to your care.
Please accept, Mister President, this small gift as an expression of public gratitude and a sign of our deep respect.
On behalf of the Society of Medicine of Paris.
Emonnot M.D.
Secretary of the Society’s
Commission on Vaccines
RC (DLC); at head of text: “La Société de Médecine de Paris Séant au Louvre A Monsieur Jefferson Président des états-Unis”; endorsed by TJ as received 2 Oct. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: see below.
Jean Baptiste Emonnot (1761–1823) had a doctorate in medicine from the University of Caen. He later served for a number of years as the president of the medical society in Paris, the société de médecine, which had been founded in 1796 (, 12:448; , 1157).
l’honneur de vous offrir: Emonnot may have enclosed a report of the Comité Central de Vaccine that had been published several months earlier as a supplement to a medical journal. Beginning about 1800, doctors in Paris gave considerable attention to vaccination against smallpox and to preventive medicine in general (“Vaccine,” Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, etc., 4 [1802], 389–400; Dora B. Weiner and Michael J. Sauter, “The City of Paris and the Rise of Clinical Medicine,” Osiris, 2d ser., 18 [2003], 40).