Several instances have come under my observation which justify
the assertion that the disease cannot be propagated by effluvia.
The first boy whom I inoculated with the matter of cow-pox slept
in a bed, while the experiment was going forward, with two
children who never had gone through either that disease or the
smallpox, without infecting either of them.
A young woman who had the cow-pox to a great extent, several
sores which maturated having appeared on the hands and wrists,
slept in the same bed with a fellow-dairymaid who never had been
infected with either the cow-pox or the smallpox, but no
indisposition followed.
Another instance has occurred of a young woman on whose hands
were several large suppurations from the cow-pox, who was at the
same time a daily nurse to an infant, but the complaint was not
communicated to the child.
In some other points of view the inoculation of this disease
appears preferable to the variolous inoculation.
In constitutions predisposed to scrophula, how frequently we see
the inoculated smallpox rouse into activity that distressful
malady! This circumstance does not seem to depend on the manner
in which the distemper has shewn itself, for it has as frequently
happened among those who have had it mildly as when it has
appeared in the contrary way.
There are many who, from some peculiarity in the habit, resist
the common effects of variolous matter inserted into the skin,
and who are in consequence haunted through life with the
distressing idea of being insecure from subsequent infection. A
ready mode of dissipating anxiety originating from such a cause
must now appear obvious. And, as we have seen that the
constitution may at any time be made to feel the febrile attack
of cow-pox, might it not, in many chronic diseases, be introduced
into the system, with the probability of affording relief, upon
well-known physiological principles?
Although I say the system may at any time be made to feel the
febrile attack of cow-pox, yet I have a single instance before me
where the virus acted locally only, but it is not in the least
probable that the same person would resist the action both of the
cow-pox virus and the variolous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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