Contagious and infectious diseases : measures for their prevention and arrest; small pox (variola); modified small pox (varioloid); chicken pox (varicella); cow pox (variolæ vaccinaæ); vaccination, spurious vaccination / prepared for the guidance of the quarantine officers and sanitary inspectors by Joseph Jones.

  • Jones, Joseph, 1833-1896.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contagious and infectious diseases : measures for their prevention and arrest; small pox (variola); modified small pox (varioloid); chicken pox (varicella); cow pox (variolæ vaccinaæ); vaccination, spurious vaccination / prepared for the guidance of the quarantine officers and sanitary inspectors by Joseph Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    9 Br. .Tenner, pp. 15-19, gives some instances of persons taking the cow-pox -who had certainly gone through the small-pox. But lie says, It is a fact so well known among onr dairy farmers, that those who have had the small-pox either escape the cow-pox or are disposed to have it slightly ; that as soon as the complaint shows itself among the cattle, assistants are procured, if possible, who are thus rendered less susceptible of it, otherwise the business of the farm could scarcely go forward. I have not got much additional information on this fact. It seems, however, sufficiently authenticated that people may have the cow-pox alter they have had the small-pox, hut it Will require more nice attention to satisfy the query whether, in such cases, the cow-pox affects the whole constitution or is only a local affection ? Mr. Downe*, in particular, speaks of a family who did not take the cow-pox when much exposed to the infliction, because they had all gone through the small-pox, except one who had been afflicted already with the cow-pox. I met with a servant at Mr. Rhodes' farm, on the Hampstead Road, who attested that he had suffered the cow-pox fourteen years ago, but that long before that time he had gone through the small-pox. Professor Wallt savs: The answer to the question whether a person is capable of taking the cow-pox who has gone through the small-pox, is of some decidedly that such a person is not liable to the infection of the cow-pox. Others of equal experience have answered this question with doubt.' At Mr. Rhodes' farm, at Islington, 1 found that one of the male servants who had been long employed in taking cire of milk cows in the environs of London, distinguished the cow-pox very clearly from common inflammation of the teat^ with scabs, with which several cows were at the time that I saw this man affected. He had never contracted the cow-pox, although he had been repeatedly exposed to the infection, and when others took it. He was deeply pitted with the snlall-pox, which he labored under when a young child. VI. The cow-pox is not communicated in the state of effluvia or gas, nor by adhering to the skin in an irnperceptably small quantity, nor scarce, unless it be applied to di- visions of the skin by abrasions, puucturcs, wounds, etc. Some morbific poisons are communicated to animals only in the state of invisible effluvia or gas, e. g. the miasmata which produced intermittent fevers : the contagion which produces the ulcerous sore throat, that which occasions the whooping-cough, the measles, etc. Other morbific poisons are communicated both in l he state of effluvia and in a palpable or visible quantity, e. g. the variolous poison, the matter which pro- duces in oxen, the murrain or loose bovilla, etc. Others again are not propagated in the state of effluvia or gas, but in a palpable or visible quantity only, as the hydrophobic poison, the syphilitic, etc.. and to these last must now be added the morbific poison of the cow-pox. It does not appear that the disease spreads from any infected cow among other cows which are fed in the same stable like a contagious disease. Persons who sleep in the same bed with one who is laboring with the cow-pox are not in this way liable to be infected. (See Jeuner. pp. 68, 69.) It is not even propa- gated from the cows to the milkers for the most part, unless the skin of the part of the hands to which the matter is applied he divided. This property of the cow-pox infection not being propagated so as to produce disease, hut by contact- and then only when applied in a palpable or visible quantity, and also scarce unless the skin ho divided, is the most important one. Yet a few instances I apprehend will suffice to show clearly under what circum- stances the cow-pox infliction produces disease. A boy who was inoculated for the cow-pox slept, while he was laboring under the disease, with two other boys, but neither of them by this exposure to the affliction got the cow-pox. A young woman who had the cow-pox, with several sores, which maturated to a great extent, slept in the same bed with a fellow dairy maid who never had been inflicted either with the cow-pox or small-pox, but the disease was not communicated. A young woman, on whose hands were several large suppurations from the cow-pox. was a daily nurse to an infant, but the infant was uninfected. (See Jenner, pp. 68-69.) I am instructed uniformly by my correspondents that the cow-pox arises only from matter evidently ap- plied most frequently bv friction of the diseased teats in milking, but sometimes from the matter lodging accidentally in some soft part, yet even under the circumstance it frequently fails to infect unless there be a cut, scratch, puncture, etc., of the hands. Mr. Drewe mentions the instance of a woman who lost her eyesight in consequence of the infectious matter being heedlessly applied to the eye. and that the cow-pox has been observed to take place from handling the milk pail on which the infectious matter has been incautiously allowed to remain. VII. The local affection in the cow-pox produced in the casual way is generally more severe and of longer duration than usually happens in the local afflictions in the inocu- lated small-pox, but in the cow-pox the fever is in no case attended with symptoms which denote danger, nor has it in any instance been known to prove mortal. The cow-pox in the incidental way, for sufficientlv obvious reasons, most commonly affects the palms of the hands There is a wide difference in the degree of a local affection. I am instructed by my communi- cations that the extreme cases are, firstly, those in which the patients are inflicted with so much painful inflammation as to b°> confined to their beds for several days, and have painful phagedenic sores for several months. Secondly, those cases which are so slight that the patients are not confined at all, but get well in a week or ten days. In the more severe cases, in which the inflamed spots become vesicular with edges of the pustules more elevated than the cuticle, and of a bluish or a purple color .• there are pains of the axilla, fever and now and then a little delirium. These symptoms continue from one to three or four days, leaving ulcerated sores about the hands, which. from the sensibility of the parts, are very troublesome, and commonly heal slowly, frequently becoming phagedenic, like those from which they sprung. The lips, nostrils, eyelids and other parts of the body are sometimes affected with sores, but these evidently arise from their being heedlessly rubbed or scratched with the patient's inflicted fingers. Dr. Jenner considers the bluish or livid tint of the pustules to be characteristic of the cow-pox. P. 5. Mr Drewe's information on the fact is; That the symptoms are similar to 1 he small-pox, but less violent- The pustules are only aboui, the hands, in the parts which have been in contact with the infected teats.' *Mr. Downe's letter of August AQ. fLetter of Professor Wall, aboT® c'