Dr. C. Creighton, M.D. and vaccination : a review / by J. McVail.

  • McVail, John C. (John Christie), 1849-1926.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. C. Creighton, M.D. and vaccination : a review / by J. McVail. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    17/48 (page 15)
    words omitted by Dr Creighton, sliould be instantly inserted; (3.) That in performing the operation the adipose tissue should not he wounded; and (4.) That matter should not be inserted by lodging a thread, dipped in the virus, in the part operated on. Will any medical man excepting Dr Creighton see in these precautions any attempt to falsify the variolous test, or anything which does not meet with his heartiest approval ? Indeed, Jenner's correctness of view as to the practice of vaccination itself is no- where better displayed than in connexion with the parallel subject of the choice of lymph. Dr Creighton has great admiration for Woodville, and some even for Pearson, as compared witli Jenner. But at a time when Jenner was insisting on a rule never to in- oculate [vaccinate] with matter after the eighth or ninth day, as stated in G. C. Jenner's evidence before tlie House of Commons' Committee, Woodville declared that he had never been able to discover any difference between the effects of vaccine matter taken on the eighth, ninth, tenth, or eleventh day, ^ and Pearson held that no difference is perceived between the effects of matter taken before the red areola appears and that taken when it is distinctly formed, notwithstanding the ' golden rule' [Jenner's] that has been laid down, never to use matter when such areola is distinctly formed. Even, however, if Dr Creighton's opinion of Jenner's intention were correct, the question would remain. Were the means adopted at all likely to carry out the intention ? Is it conceivable that medical men, having hunted through Jenner's book, as Dr Creighton has done, in search of the preceding cases wliich contained his references to the state of the variolous matter, and having found them, or rather having found the particular case which Dr Creighton says is the only case, should thereby be guided into the application of a fallacious test to the new inoculation ? To a country prac- titioner advocating the prophylactic properties of a cow disease, of which they knew nothing, they might indeed listen. But were they likely to pay heed to the same man when he asked them not merely to reverse their views as to what constituted successful variolous inoculation, of which they conceived they knew every- thing, but to do so for the very purpose of using the reversed doctrine as a standard by which to judge of the success or failure of the Jennerian method of preventing small-pox ? Surely the super-subtlety is not with Jenner, but with his latter-day critic. There is indeed no mystery about Jenner's observations on the proper manner of performing variolous inoculation. He knew that at a late stage of the pock, pus might be inoculated as well as small-pox, and he had reason to think that preservation of the matter for days at the temperature of the human body, as in the pocket of the inoculator, might have a deleterious effect. What he desired was that his new practice, which he hoped would be 1 Pearson's Examination of the Committee's Report, pp. 91-93.