Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The works of John Hunter. 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 following cases, being all derived from one stock, show as much as possible that new poisons are rising up every day, and those very similar to the venereal in many respects, although not in all: therefore it is the want of similarity that becomes the criterion to judge by, and not the similarity. The parents of the child who is the subject of the following history were and are to all appearance healthy people. The child was weakly when born ; and the mother having little or no milk, when it was three weeks old she gave it to a nurse whose milk was then seven months old and was giving suck to her own child. The foster mother allowed her own to suck the right breast, while the other sucked the left. The nurse observed that the skin of the foster child began to peel off; but no rawness or soreness took place except about the anus, where it looked as if scalded. The same kind of peeling took place on the lips, but they did not appear to be sore, although the people in the country said it was the thrush. The inner surface of the mouth and tongue appeared sound. In a fortnight after her receiving the child it died, and then she allowed her own child to suck both breasts for three weeks; at the end of which she came to town to nurse a gentleman’s child. She gave suck to this second child; but after being in town about ten or eleven days, she did not feel herself perfectly well: which made them suppose that the new mode of life, confinement in town, and pro- bably better living, might not agree with her, and she went into the country and took the gentleman’s child with her. About three or four days after she went to the country, for instance, about a fortnight after she took this child, and five weeks after the death of the first child, her left nipple, which the first-nursed child had always sucked, began to be sore, so that she could not let the child suck it. This ulcer on the nipple became extremely painful; in a day or two eruptions came out on her face, and soon after all over her body, but most on her legs and thighs. They continued coming out for about a fortnight, and had at first very much the appearance of the eruptions of the smallpox, and on the third venereal virus. It is true that the symptoms in children are not precisely the same either in course or appearance with the most usual symptoms of the venereal disease in adults. Diseases of the bones or periosteum seem never to occur, nor are the eruptions tubercular. Yet as the symptoms in the adult from whom the disease is received, and the adult to whom it is communicated, are exactly identical with those of common sy- philis, it must be inferred that the difference is to be ascribed to the age and circum - stances of an infant, and not to a diversity of virus. It is impossible to admit the argument used by the author, that secondary symptoms never contaminate, and therefore these cases must be mistaken. The facts are so well established that it is more easy to question the principle which he has laid down than to doubt the facts.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996635_0002_0497.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
