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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    zeal for that definition of genuine pox in the cow, he excom- municated the “ spontaneous ” cow-pox, a sporadic malady mostly of the spring season and a rather rare liability of heifers in theii’ first milk. Practical men gave little heed to Jenner’s fancy for horse-grease, not knowing the logical need for it; * but he himself went back to his original doctrine after the public had accepted cow-pox, and notwithstanding that the “ Jennerian lymph” of practice was Woodville’s lymph, and in nowise connected with horse-grease.f That the grease of the horse’s hocks produced vesicles, and afterwards sores, on the hands of blacksmiths, farriers, and stablemen, was or is admitted by all authorities. It is admitted also that the vesicles and sores so produced are not unlike those caught from the cow’s teats, the vesicles enlarging and bulging at the periphery, degenerating into phagedenic ulcerations, apt to be attended with swelling of the nearest packet of lymphatic glands and with much constitutional fever and even delirium. Jenner mentions several such cases, and at p. 96 gives the details of one case reported by Fewster : “ On the middle joint of the thumb of the right hand there was a small phagedenic ulcer, about the size of a large pea, discharging an ichorous fluid. On the middle Anger of the same hand there was another ulcer of a similar kind. These sores were of a circular form, and he [the patient] described their fii-st appearance as being some- what like blisters arising from a hum. He complained of excessive pain, which extended up his arm into the axilla. These symptoms and appearances of the sores were so exactly like the cow-pox, that I pronounced he had the distemper from milking cows. He assured me that he had not milked a cow for more than half a year, and that his master’s cows had nothing the matter with them.” His master, * See note on p. 73. f Baron’s Life, ii. 22G.