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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    he and several of his schoolfellows (how many I don’t exactly remember) infected themselves at the same time, from the same person, and that not one of them miscarry’d, though he had more of the Small Pox than he designed. . . . “ He solemnly declares that, having when at school, as I formerly said, rubb’d the skin off his left hand, where the scar is now very visible, with the back edge of his penknife, till the blood began to appear, he apply'd the variolous matter to that part. . . . “There are now living in this Town [Haverford West] and neighbourhood five or six persons, who undoubtedly had that distemper after taking the foresaid method to infect themselves : one of whom, a young woman aged twenty-three, told me (since I received your letter) that, about eight or nine years ago, in order to infect herself, she held twenty pocky scabs (taken from one toward the latter end of the distemper) in the hollow of her hand a considerable time; that about ten or twelve days afterwards she sicken’d, and had upwards of thirty large pustules in her Face and other parts; and that she has since freely conversed with such as have had the Small Pox on them.” Mr. Wright,^ surgeon, of Haverford West, also gave a description of buying the Small Pox in a letter to Mr. Sylvanus Bevan, an apothecary in London ;— “ I received yours the 9th instant, and in answer to it will readily give you all the satisfaction I can, in relation to a very antient custom in this country; commonly called buying the Small Pox, which, upon a strict inquiry, since I had your letter, I find to be a common practice, and of very long standing; being assured by persons of unquestionable veracity, and of advanced age, that they have had the Small Pox communicated to themselves this way,^ when about sixteen or seventeen years of age, they then being very capable of distinguishing that distemper from any other; and that they have parted with the matter contained in the pustules to others, producing the same effects. There are two large