Description of the distinct, confluent, and inoculated smallpox, varioloid disease, cow pox, and chicken pox / By John D. Fisher.

  • John Dix Fisher
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Description of the distinct, confluent, and inoculated smallpox, varioloid disease, cow pox, and chicken pox / By John D. Fisher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    painting of it was made. The pocks at this period were all in a state of suppuration ; and some of the oldest of them had begun to show signs of desiccation. In these four plates the regular progress of the small pox eruption, for eight days, and the various appearances which it assumed during its papular, vesicular and suppurative stages, and even till it began to desiccate, are cor¬ rectly delineated and may be easily studied. After the eighth day of the eruption, the pustules pursued their march till the tenth, when the child died. All the common symptoms, which are men¬ tioned in the succeeding description of the natural distinct small pox, as pe¬ culiar to the disease, attended this child’s eruption. The face, and the erup¬ tive surface generally became inflamed and swollen, as the pocks increased in number, and pursued their course towards maturity, and the child suffer¬ ed much from soreness in the throat and bowels, and from diarrhoea. The fever subsided on the breaking out of the eruption, but it reappeared again, with great force on the commencement of the suppurative stage, and raged with increased intensity till the little patient died. During this time the brain was much oppressed, and the day previous to the child’s death a con¬ siderable hemorrhage took place from the nose. The eruption, as will be seen by the print, had a slight confluent tenden¬ cy, and about the sixth or seventh day the pocks became somewhat flatten¬ ed in consequence of an absorption of their contents. On post-mortem ex¬ amination the mucous membranes of the fauces, oesophagus and stomach, were found to be considerably inflamed, and numerous whitish specks were discovered in them, which were supposed to have been the remains of pustules which had invaded these organs. The lungs and brain were gorged with blood, and some effusion had taken place in the ventricles of the last nam¬ ed organ. In the Figures under the portraits in plates I. and II. is a representation of the confluent Small Pox eruption as it appeared at different periods on
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