History and pathology of vaccination / by Edgar M. Crookshank.

  • Edgar Crookshank
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History and pathology of vaccination / by Edgar M. Crookshank. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    In America.—In 1721, Small Pox visited this country after an absence of nineteen years. The Rev, Cotton Mather copied the accounts of inocula- tion given by Timoni and Pylarini in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and sent them to the practitioners of Boston. Dr. Zabdiel Boylston^ was induced to inoculate his child, and two of his negro servants, and in six months' he had inoculated 244 persons. It may be interesting to note that out of these 244 cases, in six there was no effect at all, and six died in consequence of the inoculation, but the deaths were attributed to other causes. “And as to those who died under Inoculation, I would observe that Mrs. Doxwell, we have great reason to believe, was infected before. Mr. White thro’ splenetic delusions, died rather from abstinence than the Small Pox. Mrs. Scarborough and the Indian girl died of accidents by taking cold. Mrs. Wells and Searle were persons worn out with Age and Diseases, and very- likely these two were infected before.” The true explanation is to be found in the method which Boylston not only employed in his own cases, but also recommended to other inoculators. “Take your Medicine or Pus from the ripe pustules of the Small Pox of the distinct kind, either from those in the natural way, or from the inoculated sort, provided the person be other- wise healthy and the matter good. . . , ‘Boylston, An Historical Account of the Small Pox moculated in New England tcpon all Sorts of Persons, Whites, Blacks, atjd of all Ages and Constitutions. 1726.