First, Thomas Pearce is the son of a smith and farrier near to
this place. He never had the cow-pox; but, in consequence of
dressing horses with sore heels at his father's, when a lad, he
had sores on his fingers which suppurated, and which occasioned a
pretty severe indisposition. Six years afterwards I inserted
variolous matter into his arm repeatedly, without being able to
produce any thing more than slight inflammation, which appeared
very soon after the matter was applied, and afterwards I exposed
him to the contagion of the smallpox with as little effect.
[Footnote: It is a remarkable fact, and well known to many, that
we are frequently foiled in our endeavours to communicate the
smallpox by inoculation to blacksmiths, who in the country are
farriers. They often, as in the above instance, either resist the
contagion entirely, or have the disease anomalously. Shall we not
be able to account for this on a rational principle?]
CASE XIV.--Secondly, Mr. James Cole, a farmer in this parish, had
a disease from the same source as related in the preceding case,
and some years after was inoculated with variolous matter. He had
a little pain in the axilla and felt a slight indisposition for
three or four hours. A few eruptions shewed themselves on the
forehead, but they very soon disappeared without advancing to
maturation.
CASE XV.--Although in the former instances the system seemed to
be secured, or nearly so, from variolous infection, by the
absorption of matter from the sores produced by the diseased
heels of horses, yet the following case decisively proves that
this cannot be entirely relied upon until a disease has been
generated by the morbid matter from the horse on the nipple of
the cow, and passed through that medium to the human subject.
Mr. Abraham Riddiford, a farmer at Stone in this parish, in
consequence of dressing a mare that had sore heels, was affected
with very painful sores in both his hands, tumours in each
axilla, and severe and general indisposition. A surgeon in the
neighbourhood attended him, who knowing the similarity between
the appearance of the sores upon his hands and those produced by
the cow-pox, and being acquainted also with the effects of that
disease on the human constitution, assured him that he never need
to fear the infection of the smallpox; but this assertion proved
fallacious, for, on being exposed to the infection upwards of
twenty years afterwards, he caught the disease, which took its
regular course in a very mild way. There certainly was a
difference perceptible, although it is not easy to describe it,
in the general appearance of the pustules from that which we
commonly see. Other practitioners who visited the patient at my
request agreed with me in this point, though there was no room
left for suspicion as to the reality of the disease, as I
inoculated some of his family from the pustules, who had the
smallpox, with its usual appearances, in consequence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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