assuming the appearance of the small vesications produced by a
burn. Most commonly they appear about the joints of the fingers
and at their extremities; but whatever parts are affected, if the
situation will admit, these superficial suppurations put on a
circular form, with their edges more elevated than their centre,
and of a colour distantly approaching to blue. Absorption takes
place, and tumours appear in each axilla. The system becomes
affected--the pulse is quickened; and shiverings, succeeded by
heat, with general lassitude and pains about the loins and limbs,
with vomiting, come on. The head is painful, and the patient is
now and then even affected with delirium. These symptoms, varying
in their degrees of violence, generally continue from one day to
three or four, leaving ulcerated sores about the hands, which,
from the sensibility of the parts, are very troublesome, and
commonly heal slowly, frequently becoming phagedenic, like those
from whence they sprung. The lips, nostrils, eyelids, and other
parts of the body are sometimes affected with sores; but these
evidently arise from their being heedlessly rubbed or scratched
with the patient's infected fingers. No eruptions on the skin
have followed the decline of the feverish symptoms in any
instance that has come under my inspection, one only excepted,
and in this case a very few appeared on the arms: they were very
minute, of a vivid red colour, and soon died away without
advancing to maturation; so that I cannot determine whether they
had any connection with the preceding symptoms.
Thus the disease makes its progress from the horse [Footnote:
Jenner's conclusion that "grease" and cow-pox were the same
disease has since been proved erroneous; but this error has not
invalidated his main conclusion as to the relation of cow-pox and
smallpox.--EDITOR.] to the nipple of the cow, and from the cow to
the human subject
Morbid matter of various kinds, when absorbed into the system,
may produce effects in some degree similar; but what renders the
cow-pox virus so extremely singular is that the person who has
been thus affected is forever after secure from the infection of
the smallpox; neither exposure to the variolous effluvia, nor the
insertion of the matter into the skin, producing this distemper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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