The vaccination question, being the second issue of a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1894 to ... H.H. Asquith : togetther with a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1895 ... to Arthur James Balfour. With notes and corrections to the letter to Mr. Asquith and an index.

  • Hutton, Arthur Wollaston, 1848-1912.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The vaccination question, being the second issue of a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1894 to ... H.H. Asquith : togetther with a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1895 ... to Arthur James Balfour. With notes and corrections to the letter to Mr. Asquith and an index. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    possessing no prophylactic power, and that the true genuine life-giving fluid must have its origin in horse- grease. This opinion he subsequently abandoned, when he found that it would be fatal to the general adoption of vaccination, if its origin in so offensive a disease were insisted on. Later operators obtained a new supply of lymph by passing small-pox virus through the cow ; and other sources have been used in recent times. In fact, when Professor Crookshank instituted an enquiry into this all-important point, with a view to obtain a clear view of the pathology of vaccination as practised in England to-day, he found that the officials at Whitehall had no standard by which the lymph was judged. There was of course no doubt as to the immediate source of that ob- tained from the wretched calves exploited by the establish- ment in Lamb's Conduit Street; but of its ultimate origin, and of the origin of the humanised lymph, sent to the office by practitioners in various parts of the country, there was no certainty at all. Some apparently could be traced back to genuine small-pox, though so weakened by trans- mission from child to child as to have lost the power of communicating that disease ; while other lymph, with some amount of probability, could be traced to horse-pox (an undoubted variety of syphilis), other to sheep-small-pox, other to goat-pox, other to cattle-plague, and so on. Any kind of matter, in fact, that, inserted under the skin will raise a vesicle or a pustule, similar to that of the cow- pox, is good enough for what is called vaccination ; and it is all equally protective. Indeed, a German doctor, Hufeland, has advocated the use of the drug popularly known as tartar emetic, which produces a like effect, and is, he alleges, no less efficacious as a prophylactic. Its employment in lieu of any variety of animal lymph has this much to be said in its favour, that, being a mild,