An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae : a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae : a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    177/216
    Woodville published the result, which differs essentially from mine in a point of much importance. It appears that three-fifths of the patients inoculated were affected with eruptions, for the most part so perfectly resembling the Small Pox, as not to be distinguished from them. On this subject it is necessary that I should make some comments. When I consider that out of the great number of Cases of casual inoculation immediately from cows, which have from time to time presented themselves to my observation, and the many similar instances which have been communicated to me by medical gentlemen in this neighbourhood ; when I con- sider too that the matter with which my inoculations were conducted in the years 1797, 98, and 99, was taken from different cows, and that in no instance any thing like a vario- lous pustule appeared, I cannot feel disposed to imagine that eruptions, similar to those described by Dr. Woodville, have ever been produced by the ]mre nncontaminaied Coiv Pock virus: on the contrary, I do suppose that those which the Doctor speaks of, originated in the action of variolous matter, which