Variola ovina, sheep's small pox, or The laws of contagious epidemics illustrated by an experimental type.

  • Budd, William, 1811-1880.
Date:
1863
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Variola ovina, sheep's small pox, or The laws of contagious epidemics illustrated by an experimental type. 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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    began, as such outbreaks generally do, with a single case. Towards the latter end of June, Mr. Parry, riding alongside one of his folds containing about three hun- dred ewes, observed one of them lying on the hurdles, at the point of death. She was, in fact, in the last stage of variola ovina, and died shortly after. The carcase was put aside, and little was thought of the circumstance. In the course of a few days, other sheep of the same lot were attacked, and died in the same way; and Mr. Parry was soon made aware that his flock was becoming the prey of a new and fatal scourge. The two-year old ewes had up to that time been kept with their lambs; but,it being thought better to separate them, the lambs were removed and put with other lambs on the farm, the ewes being turned among the general breeding stock—making alto- gether a thousand ewes and seven hundred lambs. Unfortunately, both ewes and lambs carried the infec- tion with them. In about a fortnight—which, I may remark, is about the average period of incubation when the dis- ease is taken in the natural way—the same symptoms began to show themselves in the flock generally. From this time the march of events was swift. By the end of July, more than four hundred sheep had been attacked, and two hundred or thereabouts had already perished. So rapidly and with such fatal effect did the leaven work. Things were at this pass when, on the 1st of Au- gust, Professor Simonds, who had been summoned from London, arrived at Allington. As the best means of saving the rest of the flock, and of putting a definite term to the outbreak, this gentleman resolved to inoculate the whole flock—an operation that was performed without delay. Before the epidemic ceased, it had spread to eight or nine other farms, and nearly 800 sheep had fallen a sacrifice to it. When I visited Wiltshire on the 13th September following, there were still, as I said before, some 700 sheep in various stages of the disease. Of these, some few had taken the disorder in the natural way, but by far the greater number by inoculation. To the physician, not the least interesting thing was to see a measure, which once had so great a vogue as a means for disarming the malignity of human small-pox, employed with the same aims, and with precisely the same results, in the corresponding