Report of a committee appointed by the Sanitary Commission to prepare a paper on the value of vaccination in armies.

Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of a committee appointed by the Sanitary Commission to prepare a paper on the value of vaccination in armies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/40 page 28
    show on the extremities, and less copiously on the trunk, a lichenous, roseolar or vesicular eruption, which commonly con- tinues for about a week. When vaccination is performed on such adults or adolescents as have not previously been vacci- nated, and likewise when lymph is employed which has re- cently been derived from the cow, the resulting phenomena, as compared with the preceding description, are somewhat retarded in their course; and the areola is apt to be much more diffuse. There is also more feverishness; but eruption is less frequently seen. (B.) When persons who have once been efficiently vaccinated are, some years afterwards, re vaccinated with effective lymph, there sometimes result vesicles, which, as regards their course and that of the attendant areolae, cannot be distinguished from the perfect results of primary vaccination. But far more usually the results are more or less modified by the influence of such previous vaccination. Often no true vesicles form, but merely papular elevations surrounded by areolae; and these results having attained their maximum on or before the fifth day, afterwards quickly decline. Or if vesicles form, their shape is apt to vary from that of the regular vesicle, and their course to be more rapid, so that their maturity is reached on or before the sixth day, their areolae decline on or before the eighth day, and their scabbing begins correspondingly early. In either case the areolae tend to diffuse themselves more widely and less regularly, and with more affection of the cellular membrane, than in primary vaccination; and the local changes are accom- panied by much itching, often by some irritation of the axillary glands, and in some cases on the fourth or fifth day by con- siderable febrile disturbance. Method of Preserving Vaccine Lymph. By Dr. Husband, of Edinburgh.* The following method of preserving lymph in capillary glass tubes has been found entirely successful. Lymph has been used after being kept for several years, with satisfactory results. The tube employed is simple, straight, cylindrical, open at both ends, and of such dimensions as to fulfil the following conditions, upon which it will be found that its peculiar value, as a means for preserving lymph for future every-day use, essen- tially depends. It must be— 1. In the first place, of such tenuity that it can be sealed instantaneously at the flame of a candle. * Second Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1859. (Blue Book.) London.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3