The natural history of cow-pox and vaccinal syphilis / by Charles Creighton.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural history of cow-pox and vaccinal syphilis / by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the experiment. It was not until nearly two years after that Jenner renewed his attempt with cow-pox. On the 16th of March, 1798, William Summers, aged five years, was inoculated with “ matter from the nipples of a cow,” and the progress of the pustule was “ similar to that noticed in the case of James Phijjps ; ” that is to say, there were “ eschars ” subsequent to the formation of the scab. From the boy Summers matter was taken on the twelfth day, and inoculated on William Pead, aged eight years, of whose arm a coloured plate is given (Plate III.) representing a vesicle with the brownish centre fallen in. From the boy Pead “ several children and adults were inoculated,” whose subsequent progress is veiy meagrely indicated : three of them had an “ extensive erysipelatous inflammation. It seemed to arise from the state of the pustule, which spread out to about half the diameter of a sixpence [very moderate size]. . . . By the aisplication of mercurial ointment to the inflamed parts the complaint subsided without giving much trouble.” The only case specified in this series is that of Hannah Excell, aged seven years; and she was probably the only one from whom lymph was taken. Plate IV. shows thi’ee vesicles (of unequal size) on her arm at the ninth day. From her lymph was inoculated on the 12th of April upon two infants and two young girls. In one of these the virus failed to “ take ” ; * in another the vesicle “ scabbed quickly without *This was Jenner’s second son, Robert F. Jenner, aged eleven months, who figures in the well-known story in marble, issuing from the modern Italian school, of “ Jenner Vaccinating his own Child.” When the boy was really inoculated a few years later, on a sudden emergency at Chelten- ham, it was not with cow-pox matter, but with the old-fashioned variolous matter. (See Baron’s Lt/e of Jennei’, i. 147, and ii. 43, 152.)