Researches upon 'spurious vaccination,' or the abnormal phenomena accompanying and following vaccination in the Confederate Army, during the recent American Civil War, 1861-1865 / by Joseph Jones.

  • Jones, Joseph, 1833-1896.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches upon 'spurious vaccination,' or the abnormal phenomena accompanying and following vaccination in the Confederate Army, during the recent American Civil War, 1861-1865 / by Joseph Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    121/136 (page 121)
    symptoms, and angina is frequently superadded. A discharge, vegetations, and exostoses, are very rare, and buboes, when they occur, consist only of swelling and tension of the sub-maxillary or axillary glands. In 53 infants, the disease manifested itself one month after birth in 33 ; at the expiration of two months in 11; of three months in 4 ; and in one only after the expiration of eight months. These statistics show how easily parties may he deceived as to the condition of infants that have been subject to the syphilitic poison, and how readily nurses may he exposed to the syphilitic poison from infants taken by them to nurse, without the slightest apprehension, whose parents even might not have a suspicion of the existence of the disease.—(Rankin’s Abstract, Yol. v, p. 219, from Graz. Med. di Milano, and Gaz. Med. de Paris, Oct. 24, 1846.) On the 25th of October, 1858, a letter was addressed to the Imperial Academy of Medicine at Paris, by the Minister of Com- merce, Agriculture, and Public Works, requesting an anthori- i tative answer upon two questions : first, whether constitutional syphilis was contagious; and, secondly, whether, as regards con- tagion, there was a difference between constitutional syphilis as seen in infants at the breart and in adults. This letter led to the appointmant of a commission consisting of MM. Yelpeau, Ricord, Devergie, Depaul, and Gilbert, and these commissioners reported and their report was adopted by the Academy,—first that some of the manifestations of secondary syphilis, especially condylomata, are undoubtedly contagious; and, secondly, that there is no reason to suppose that the case is different in infants at the breast and in adults. The commissioners arrived at this conclusion after examining the clinical facts and experimental researches already on record, and after four experiments of their own, which were undertaken with great reluctance on their part. The persons experimented upon were all suffering from lupus, hut free from any syphilitic taint, and these were chosen from the notion that the treatment for syphilis, if the inoculation took effect, might possibly be of service in remedying the lupus. 16