Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband.

  • Husband, William, 1822-1901.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband. 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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    one of the papers presented to parliament in 1857, relative to the history and practice of vaccination. Lymph, says Mr Marson, in a paper otherwise of great practical value, ought not to be kept in a stoppered bottle above 24 hours in warm weather, or 48 in cold. Like all other animal sub- stances, it soon begins to undergo chemical changes which render it unfit for use. When it has become putrid, or even putrescent, it will produce the fatal results which are well known to follow inoculation with decaying animal matter. Much the same remarks apply, mutatis mutandis, to the lymph preserved in capillary tubes, as to that preserved in bottles. Now I might ask here—Will you give me a security that if I keep a charged ivory point for a certain time, the dried lymph will not begin to decay ? Doubtless it would not be easy to ascertain this by the unaided sense of smell. The quantity is too minute for that; and so also the quantity of lymph which one of the tubes contains, although amply sufficient to vaccinate one patient, is so small that you may ascertain its putrescency by chemi- cal tests perhaps, or by the microscope, but not otherwise. Others may investigate this subject. I have been in no haste to do so ; and yet I am perhaps justified in saying, that our collective experience in this city has long since disposed of the question, regarding the probable putrescency of the lymph in the tubes, as one of no practical consequence whatever. I do not mean to say, that once sealed up it undergoes no change. I know not what changes may take place in it; but I do assert, after a very ample experience of the working of the method for twelve years, that the proper- ties of the lymph remain entirely unaltered in so far as they
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