On vaccination / republished wity notes, by J.M. Cosgrave.

  • Gregory, George, 1790-1853.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On vaccination / republished wity notes, by J.M. Cosgrave. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    truth or falsehood of this statement should be ascertained; and it was originally my intention to have made this the first subject oi inquiry in the present communication, but the appearance in your columns of a letter signed M. D. obliges me to clear the ground by a few preliminary remarks. I cannot bring myself to believe that that letter expresses the general opinions of the profession on the subject which it under- takes to discuss; but the notice which you have thought proper to take of it, has given it an importance to which per se it is scarce- ly entitled. The writer is pleased to say, that my single remark on the theory of spurious cow-pox (occupying exactly three lines of your small columns,) exhibits a strain of sentiment calculated to do much mischief; and he inquires, with great formality, whether I believe in an imperfect cow-pox, when the self-same letter (No. 1,) concludes with an expression of my intention to inquire into the probable sources of imperfection in the vaccine process. The remaining questions which the writer of that letter has put, show that he has only thought very superficially on the subject which he discusses; for he mixes up many doubtful, and some quite inaccurate statements, with others that are clear and unde- niable. I shall take the liberty of offering a few comments on these questions, the more willingly, as the discussions to which they will lead fall in with some which the undisturbed course of my argument would have naturally suggested. I cannot avoid entertaining the suspicion that your correspon- dent, M. D., has never hunted sufficiently through the older writers to know what they meant by spurious cow-pox; for he talks of it as not affording the full amount of protection. Dr. Jenner defined that to be a spurious cow-pox which is incapable of producing any specific change in the constitution, but which leaves it as sus- ceptible of the small-pox as any other common cutaneous disor- der. The original notions on this subject were, that there are three diseases of the cow's udder and of the horse's hoof, which have been indiscriminately termed cow-pox; but that only one of these three is the real preventive of small-pox. The other two were called spurious cow-pox; but it was confidently maintained that these two spurious disorders were capable of being continued by successive inoculations,—frequently showed an exact similarity in many of their appearances to the true species,—and that it re- quired the discrimination of the exercised practitioner to distinguish the one from the other.'] This was the original doctrine of a spurious cow-pox; and I repeat what I said before, that such an idea no longer disturbs our minds; and that the doctrine, as thus announc- ed, was, I firmly believe, a mere phantom. It will be observed, that the term spurious, as originally applied to cow-pox, had re- t Sec Addrees to the Public, by II. W. Jenner, 1799. Pages 9, 12, and 13.