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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    It is not surprising that physicians were extremely anxious to find out the secret of Mr. Sutton’s success. Dr. Baker^ was one of the first to get detailed in- formation of the new method; and he published an account of it. Dr. Rushlin, by means of an “ ingeni- ous gentleman who was conversant with Mr, Sutton’s patients,” obtained samples of the medicines, and subjected them to analysis. Dr. Langton described the method as a gross imposition, and argued that the matter communicated was not the Small Pox. He pointed out that the practice was, to take the virus the fourth day after the incision was made. “ By this means you have a contagious caustic water instead of laudable pus, and a slight ferment in the lymph is raised, producing a few watery blotches in the place’ of a perfect extru- sion of the variolous matter.” In 1767, the arguments of Dr. Langton and Mr. Bromfield were replied to by Dr. Giles Watts.^ To explain why the effect of the new treatment was so slight, and to justify it, it was said that the aim was to get inoculation without pustules, because they were mindful of the observation of Dr. Boerhaave, that the Small Pox often happened without any pustules at all. That the result of the Suttonian Inoculation was, as a rule, very slight indeed, was admitted. ' leaker. An Inquiry into the Merits of a Method of Inoculating the Small Pox. ] 766. ■ Giles Watts. A PIndication of the New Method of Inoculating the Small Pox. 1767. VOL. I. 4