In order to ascertain whether the boy, after feeling so slight an
affection of the system from the cow--pox virus, was secure from
the contagion of the smallpox, he was inoculated the 1st of July
following with variolous matter, immediately taken from a
pustule. Several slight punctures and incisions were made on both
his arms, and the matter was carefully inserted, but no disease
followed. The same appearances were observable on the arms as we
commonly see when a patient has had variolous matter applied,
after having either the cow--pox or smallpox. Several months
afterwards he was again inoculated with variolous matter, but no
sensible effect was produced on the constitution.
Here my researches were interrupted till the spring of the year
1798, when, from the wetness of the early part of the season,
many of the farmers' horses in this neighbourhood were affected
with sore heels, in consequence of which the cow--pox broke out
among several of our dairies, which afforded me an opportunity of
making further observations upon this curious disease.
A mare, the property of a person who keeps a dairy in a
neighbouring parish, began to have sore heels the latter end of
the month of February, 1798, which were occasionally washed by
the servant men of the farm, Thomas Virgoe, William Wherret, and
William Haynes, who in consequence became affected with sores in
their hands, followed by inflamed lymphatic glands in the arms
and axillae, shiverings succeeded by heat, lassitude, and general
pains in the limbs. A single paroxysm terminated the disease; for
within twenty--four hours they were free from general
indisposition, nothing remaining but the sores on their hands.
Haynes and Virgoe, who had gone through the smallpox from
inoculation, described their feelings as very similar to those
which affected them on sickening with that malady. Wherret never
had had the smallpox. Haynes was daily employed as one of the
milkers at the farm, and the disease began to shew itself among
the cows about ten days after he first assisted in washing the
mare's heels. Their nipples became sore in the usual way, with
bluish pustules; but as remedies were early applied, they did not
ulcerate to any extent.
CASE XVIII.--John Baker, a child of five years old, was
inoculated March 16, 1798, with matter taken from a pustule on
the hand of Thomas Virgoe, one of the servants who had been
infected from the mare's heels. He became ill on the sixth day
with symptoms similar to those excited by cow--pox matter. On the
eighth day he was free from indisposition.
There was some variation in the appearance of the pustule on the
arm. Although it somewhat resembled a smallpox pustule, yet its
similitude was not so conspicuous as when excited by matter from
the nipple of the cow, or when the matter has passed from thence
through the medium of the human subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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