An inquiry concerning the history of the cowpox : principally with a view to supersede and extinguish the smallpox.

  • George Pearson
Date:
1798
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry concerning the history of the cowpox : principally with a view to supersede and extinguish the smallpox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    113/120 page 109
    •j • t io9 ] meaning will be popularly underflood in the Englifh tongue, by faying that it is a name of a difeafe, betterknown by another name, thz Small- pox. Granting that the word Variola is a deriva- tive from Farms and Varus, ufed by Pliny and Ceffus to denote a difeafe, with fpots on the Ikin ; the etymological import of Variola is any cuta- neous fpotted diflemper : but one of the moft formidable and diflindl of the cutaneous order, is what is called the Smallpox, and, therefore, as I apprehend the name Variola has been ufed technically kxt to fignify this one kind of fpotted malady, and no other. Now as the Cowpox is a fpecifically different diflemper from the Smallpox, in effential parti- culars, namely, in the nature of its morbific poifon, and in its fymptoms; although the Cowpox may render the conflitution not fuf- ceptible of the Smallpox ; it is a palpable cata- chrejis to defignate what is called the Cowpox, by the denomination Fariolze vaccinre', for that is to fay, in Englifh, Cow-Smallpox, and yet the Cow is unfufceptible of infection by the variolous poifon. To the name Cowpox, or better, perhaps, Cow-pocken* in our language, I think no rea- * Inftead of the modern orthography Small-poX, &c. in
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3