Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Notes on vaccination : essay LV / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![diseases, which the small-pox has too frequently been observed to do ”—and which the cow-pox itself also does now. “9. The cow-pox does not prevent the small-pox, unless the constitution be affected with fever &c. during the disease.” How much this was insisted on by Jenner himself is noticeable. On March 12th, 1799, Dr. Pearson adds:—“ Upwards of one hundred and sixty patients, from two weeks to forty years of age, principally infants, have been inocu- lated [with vaccine] siuce the 20th of January last, by Dr. Woodville and myself, separately: “ 1. Not one mortal case occurred. 2. Not one of the patients was considered to be dangerously ill. 3. . . . the amount of the constitutional illness seemed to be as great as in the same number of patients in the inoculated small-pox. 4. None of the patients, namely, above sixty, hitherto inoculated for the small-pox, subsequently to the vaccine disease, took the infection. 5. The local affection in the inoculated part, on the whole, was less considerable and of shorter duration, than in the iuocu- lated small-pox. 6. In many of the cases, eruptions on the body appeared, some of which could not be distin- guished from the small-pox.” In June, 1799, Dr. Woodville, Physician to the Small- pox and Inoculation hospitals, published his “ Reports.” He concludes that the vaccine disease is not derived from the hoi’se. He details the cases which he inocu- lated between the 21st of January, 1799, and the 18th of March following, amounting to two hundred. Nearly the whole of these persons were subsequently inoculated with variolous matter, and many of them exposed to persons labouring under this disease, without a single instance of the small-pox being produced after the vac- cine infection had taken effect. Afterwards Dr. Wood- ville says :—“ It must be acknowledged that in several instances the cow-pox has proved a very severe disease. In three or four cases out of 500 the patient has been in considerable danger, and one child actually died under the effects of the disease. Now, if it be admitted that at an average, one of 500 will die of the inoculated cow- pox, I confess I should not be disposed to introduce this disease into the Inoculation hospital, because out of the last 5000 cases of variolous inoculation, the number of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21944234_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
