Variola, vaccination, varicella, cholera, erysipelas, whooping cough, hay fever / by H. Immermann [and others] ; edited with additions by John W. Moore ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengel.
- Immermann, H.
- Date:
- 1902
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Variola, vaccination, varicella, cholera, erysipelas, whooping cough, hay fever / by H. Immermann [and others] ; edited with additions by John W. Moore ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengel. Source: Wellcome Collection.
33/730 (page 23)
![may be considered as the standard in this case, many people were exposed once or oftener to natural smallpox infection with impunity; nay, more, were even inoculated with smallpox with impunity, and yet some time later became susceptible, and were attacked by the disease. Similar observations have been repeatedly made more recently in those who have not been inoculated. These things can be explained only on the supposition of a temporary immunity. In those who have been vaccinated and revaccinated analogous evidence can be less strictly deduced, as the protective power of vaccination has no single, fixed duration. It seems undeniable that outside of the admissible limits of possible protection by inoculation (and therefore independently of it) conditions of temporary immunity exist which render the individual for the time being safe from infection. In so far as the question concerns, not those who are otherwise sick (see later), but the healthy, the phe- nomenon is entirely beyond our comprehension. Apart from this, the natural susceptibility to variola belongs not only to the overwhelming majority of the human race, but without exception to all ages. The fetus in the mother’s womb may be infected, but this generally happens only when the mother herself is attacked with variola during pregnancy. If a pregnant woman has smallpox, she usually bears children who either have, at birth, marks of the exanthera or are attacked with variola so soon after birth that, taking into consideration the usual time of incubation, an intra-uteriue infection is the only possi- ble explanation. In rare ciises, however, a mother who was apparently free from the disease, during a smallpox e})ideniic, has borne children with the marks of the disease, although in some of the observations, the mother may have had a slight attack of variola, but so slight that the diagnosis was doubtful. [Curschmann considers that some of these infrequent cases may be explained on the hypothesis that the mother sutfered from variola sine exanthemate, and so became the source of in- fection to her unborn child.] The confined position of the embryo in the uterus offers a powerful protection, of course, against the entrance of the smallpox contagium from without, so long as the mother herself has not taken the disease; on the other hand, it is evident that so soon as this happens, the protection is withdrawn and the danger of transmission to the fetus, on account of its intimate relation to the maternal organism, is especially great. This logieally explains the almost universal occurrence of intra-uterine infec- tion when the mother has the disease, and the extreme rarity of the same when the mother is spared. Probably in both cases the placental circulation plays the role of infecting medium ; but in case of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29012090_0033.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
