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 STOCK FAILS. IS matter early enough to secure its efficacy.” * It has to be said, however, that previous to the date of that letter, and shortly after his i-eturn from London, Jenner had made a third attempt to start a continuous series of cases, and to secure a permanent stock of lymph. In Further Observations (p. Ill) he says, “I have often been foiled in my endeavours to communicate the cow-pox by inoculation. . . . Four or five servants were inoculated at a farm contiguous to this place last summer [published in April, 1799] with matter just taken from an infected cow. A little inflammation appeared on all their arms, but died away without producing a pustule; yet all these servants caught the disease within a month afterwards from milking the infected cows, and some of them had it severely.” (He mentions the same failure, “ Three or four servants at a farm were carefully inoculated with matter fresh from a cow,” in a letter to Woodville in the end of January, 1799.) For whatever reason, Jenner does not appear to have inoculated from the cow-pox which these very servants acquired accidentally a month afterwards, although he was in want of lymph to send to his correspondents. On November 8th Pearson again writes to Jenner : “ If I can but get matter, I am much mistaken if I do not make you live for ever; ” and five days later (November 13th) he writes him more urgently than before to provide matter for distribution : “ I wish you could secure for me matter for inoculation, because, depend upon it, etc. . . . By way of se de/endendo, we must inoculate.” Thus urged in all good faith by Pearson, Jenner must have felt as if * The letter is printed by Pearson in his Inquiry concerning the