On animal vaccination / by Henry Austin Martin.

  • Henry A. Martin
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On animal vaccination / by Henry Austin Martin. 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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    artificially induce cowpox by variolous inoculation of kine. During the first five years of vaccination, this experiment was probably repeated hundreds of times, and from that date to this it has been a favorite experiment with ardent investigators not satisfied with the infinitely repeated results of the past. Failure to accomplish the desired object has been the rule in all but a very few of these experiments. On the fingers of one hand may be counted the experimenters who even claim success, and these claims are by no means beyond doubt and criticism. Notwith- standing this there is a very general impression that animal vaccination consists in the practice of bovine variolation and the use of virus thus obtained. It cannot be denied that this experi- ment still possesses great scientific interest, but the elements of error are so numerous that unless observations upon it shall be made by men of consummate knowledge of all the details, not only of bovine and human vaccination, but of all the details of variola and of variolous inoculation also, they will be of little or no value. It must also be borne in mind by those who attempt to succeed where so many have failed, that more than once or twice virus, issued widely by jubilant savans, has been em- ployed, and the result has been a wide diffusion of smallpox. This whole subject possesses very great interest, and some events have transpired during the past few years which render a full examination into the propriety and safety of variolo-vaccination very necessary. Notwithstanding this, the scope of this paper does not allow of such an investigation here. Enough for us that the variolation of kine is not to be looked to at present, nor probably in the future, as a safe and desirable means of supplying vaccine virus. The writer would here state his conviction that, in some mysterious manner, nature elaborates vaccinia from variola in the system of the milch cow, but that man can, with no certainty or safety, repeat her process at will, nor does nature herself accomplish it always with equal success. (4) True Animal or Bovine Vaccination, or Heifer- transmitted-cowpox Vaccination Definition.—The inocula- tion of a young selected animal of the bovine species, from an original spontaneous case of cowpox, from this others, and so on in continuous and endless series as a source and the only source of virus to be used for the protection of the human race from variolous disease. This definition may be considered unnecessa-
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