Another circumstance strongly, in my opinion, supporting this
supposition is the following: The cow-pox has been known among
our dairies time immemorial. If pustules, then, like the
variolous, were to follow the communication of it from the cow to
the milker, would not such a fact have been known and recorded at
our farms? Yet neither our farmers nor the medical people of the
neighbourhood have noticed such an occurrence.
A few scattered pimples I have sometimes, though very rarely,
seen, the greater part of which have generally disappeared
quickly, but some have remained long enough to suppurate at their
apex. That local cuticular inflammation, whether springing up
spontaneously or arising from the application of acrid
substances, such for instance, as cantharides, pix Burgundica,
antimonium tartarizatum, etc., will often produce cutaneous
affections, not only near the seat of the inflammation, but on
some parts of the skin far beyond its boundary, is a well-known
fact. It is, doubtless, on this principle that the inoculated
cow-pock pustule and its concomitant efflorescence may, in very
irritable constitutions, produce this affection. The eruption I
allude to has commonly appeared some time in the third week after
inoculation. But this appearance is too trivial to excite the
least regard.
The change which took place in the general appearance during the
progress of the vaccine inoculation at the Smallpox Hospital
should likewise be considered.
Although at first it took on so much of the variolous character
as to produce pustules in three cases out of five, yet in Dr.
Woodville's last report, published in June, he says: "Since the
publication of my reports of inoculations for the cow-pox,
upwards of three hundred cases have been under my care; and out
of this number only thirty-nine had pustules that suppurated;
viz., out of the first hundred, nineteen had pustules; out of the
second, thirteen; and out of the last hundred and ten, only seven
had pustules. Thus it appears that the disease has become
considerably milder; which I am inclined to attribute to a
greater caution used in the choice of the matter, with which the
infection was communicated; for, lately, that which has been
employed for this purpose has been taken only from those patients
in whom the cow-pox proved very mild and well characterized."
[Footnote: In a few weeks after the cow-pox inoculation was
introduced at the Smallpox Hospital I was favoured with some
virus from this stock. In the first instance it produced a few
pustules, which did not maturate; but in the subsequent cases
none appeared.--E. J.]
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