Manual of pathology and practice : being the outline of lectures delivered / by S. Henry Dickson.
- Samuel Henry Dickson
- Date:
- 1842
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Manual of pathology and practice : being the outline of lectures delivered / by S. Henry Dickson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![color, smooth on the outside and remarkably hollowed in the centre, falls off, leaving a permanent cicatrix or scar of peculiar and characteristic aspect—its surface being marked with minute pits or depressions, similar to those on the head of a thimble, denoting, probably, the number of cells of which the vesicle had been composed. It has been observed that, in variolous inoculation, the vesicle forming at the point of insertion has been attended by the eruption of others in different parts of the body; but as respects vaccine, it is a fact of very rare occurrence. Two such instances, however, have been communicated to me authen- tically. I shall not attempt to describe any of the numerous deviations from the above history, which are to be met with in the irregu- larly diversified forms of what are called spurious vesicles. Suffice it to say, that any striking or obvious departure from the ordinary phenomena, in the progress of a vaccine pustule, should make us cautious of confiding a patient to its protective inf]uence. Vaccine, like every other disease, may undergo certain modifica- tions from the condition of the recipient, an infinite majority of which are slight and unessential, not affecting its character and influence, nor impairing its genuineness. Others there are, how- ever, though few in number, which change the nature of the specific action, either locally, or in its effect upon the system, and thus render it spurious. Of the local modifying causes, the principal and most common is the mechanical irritation of the vaccinated spot, (as by rubbing,) by which a common inflamma- tion is substituted for the specific, and a common sore produced. Erysipelatous inflammation may also supervene, and interfere with the formation of a regular vaccine pustule. Vaccine may, perhaps, be affected by or combine with some forms of constitu- tional disease, and thus take on a hybrid state. All cutaneous affections disturb the regularity of its progress, if they do not hinder the success of the operation, and no physician vaccinates as willingly from a pustule on the arm of a patient known to labor under scrofula, herpes, or lues venerea, &c. as from a healthy subject. There is a lurking doubt, in the mind of every one, however scornfully he may regard the humoral pathology,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21049166_0234.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
