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

  • John McVail
Date:
1890
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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.

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    dry scab. 21st day—Somewhat better ; throat welL The improve- ment continued irregularly, till on the 31st day her health is restored. That was on 17th May. Then on 4th July she was inoculated with variolous matter, and on 7th July it is noted, she has not taken the infection. He adds, in reference to the eruption above mentioned, As nearly as I can ascertain, she had not fewer than from 1600 to 1800 pustules. That is Ward's statement; here is Dr Creighton's— Case I.—I6th April—Girl, aged 7, successful vaccination (ol)long vesicle on 13th day, full of limpid fluid and surrounded by areola) ; was thereafter inoculated with small-pox, and had the disease in the confluent form (1600 to 1800 pustules). Thus Ward tells us she has not taken the infection, while Dr Creighton says she had the disease in the confluent form. Ward's statement does not seem difficult of interpretation. He was deceived as to the nature of his first inoculation. He had used small-pox matter, not cow-pox matter, and the result was a some- what delayed attack of confluent small-pox ; therefore the second inoculation failed. But Dr Creighton says the girl was successfully vaccinated, and then she was variolated, and to make the history complete, he transfers the 1600 or 1800 pustules from the first to the second inoculation, though Ward tells him the latter failed. That he has got fairly lost as to the sequence of events is shown by his statement that two cases were apparently variolated in the first instance by misadventure. But these two cases were X. and XL, inoculated on 30th April (the 14th day) from Case I. How possibly could they be variolated from the oblong vesicle of a successful vaccination ? Thus, after all, Dr Creighton seems at one moment to recognise the fact that the orioinal infection was small-pox, and at the next moment he forgets all about this, and speaks of it as cow-pox. Indeed, in his notes on Case X., he speaks of it as inoculated from Case I., evidently with the co-existent small-pox matter mistaken for cow-pox. It is not worth spending time over the other thirteen cases. Cases II. to VIII. were inoculated from the same source as Case I., and the other five were inoculated from Case I. There was indeed no vaccination in the business. Ward, who wrote in July 1799, had doubtless been misled into expecting pustules after cow-pox by the publication, in May of the same year, of Woodville's experience in the Small- pox Inoculation Hospital, where, as Jenner afterwards pointed out, he had for the time confused the two diseases. Blind as Ward was to the nature of his cases, he does not deserve the further misreading to which his critic subjects him. Dr Creighton says Ward sent the following series of cases, and ' congratulated mankind' on the success of cow-pox. As a matter of fact. Ward's congratulations are not based on his own experi- ence, but on the opinions which he gives from Woodville, that those persons who have had this disease by inoculation are thereby