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 IDEAL AND THE REAL HORSE-GREASE. 3/ “ the grease ” as vulgarly understood among farmers and others. Lastly, the horse-pox, so distinguished, was named variolce equince on the analogy of Jenner’s equally fanciful designation of the pap-pox of the cow as variolce vaccitice. It then remained to give a systematic account of vanolce eqtiinai in keeping with these developments of doctrine : such an account as may be read in some veterinary text-books, or in Seaton’s Handbook of Vac- cination. In the latter it is stated (p. 78) : “They [the vesicles of horse-pox] have absolutely the same structure as the vaccine or vai'iolous vesicle, and yield, though generally in small quantity, a viscid and slightly yellowish lymph. By the ninth, tenth, or eleventh day, many of them burst, exuding, often copiously, a viscid serous or sero-pui-ulent fluid : incrustation going on progressively, and forming scabs or crusts, which from the fifteenth to the twenty-fifth day detach themselves, leaving whitish superficial cicatrices.” Be it noted that the structure is the same as that of the vaccine or variolous vesicle. Let us leave these ideal or simplified pictures, and turn to the concrete realities of horse-grease as Jenner knew it, and as it still occurs in ordinary country experience. Academical subtleties apart, there is no ambiguity about horse-grease; and I think that I am myself familiar enough with its appearance to be able to make a correct diagnosis. I take the following account from Professor Hering, of the Veterinary College at Stuttgart: * “The so-called ‘acute grease’ consists in an erysipelas of the skin of the horse’s hocks, which not unfrequently e.xtends down the posterior surface of the cannon hone (metatarsus or metacai-piis); it gives rise * Ueber Kuhpocken an KvJien. Stuttgart, 1839.