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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    posed to a temperature which, in the shade, sometimes rose to 97° of Fahrenheit. Several years ago an eminent missionary, the Rev. H. M. Waddell, carried some tubes, with which I furnished him, to Old Calabar, on the west coast of Africa, and introduced vaccination there for the first time, after numerous ineffect- ual attempts had been made to introduce it by means of dry lymph. This fact is interesting, from the circumstance that Calabar is situated in north latitude 5°—that is, eleven degrees nearer the equator than St Louis on the Senegal, of which the French author formerly quoted says, Rien de plus difficile que de conserver le vaccin aus antilles et au Senegal. II est rare que celui qui vient d'Europe y reus- sisse; and eight degrees farther south than Bathurst on the Gambia, where, for years after the establishment of the colony, repeated attempts were made without success, to in- troduce vaccination by lymph sent out from England. The Report of the National Vaccine Establishment for 1852 refers to the constant disappointments which had occurred in transmitting lymph to the various British stations on the African coast; and after mentioning that the plan usually adopted by the Vaccine Board was to send it out in tubes [with terminal bulbs] hermetically sealed, attri- butes the failures to the varying circumstances of tempera- ture and other unknown atmospheric conditions, in conse- quence of which the fluid lymph may be disposed to undergo decomposition. It is difficult to see, however, what other atmospheric influences, known or unknown, except that of temperature, can possibly affect lymph enclosed in hermeti- callv sealed tubes. There are doubtless conditions of the atmosphere in Africa, as well as elsewhere (in the upper