Good vaccine lymph : an inquiry as to what extent it is desirable to employ heifer vaccination, with details of that method / by John Greene.

  • Greene, John.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Good vaccine lymph : an inquiry as to what extent it is desirable to employ heifer vaccination, with details of that method / by John Greene. 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.

    14/34 (page 14)
    Mr. Badcock, Mr, Estlin, Mr. Fletcher, and others, have formerly done notable service in this way. De- scending to the illiterate cow-leeches it would not be difficult to find some of them who, years ago, experiencing a demand for cow-pox, and failing a spontaneous case, have successfully variolated cows on their own account and sold the lymph. The public of to-day have almost forgotten the tradition of the first source of vaccination, so that to numbers it would be a matter of new in- formation, that it originally came from the cow. Since the Vaccination Act of 1857, children are mostly vaccinated because they are so compelled by law. The once all-powerful dread of small-pox has been superseded by the dread of bad vaccination—a fear at any rate better founded than that of the old objectors, that they should have horns grow and brown hair. The knowledge of the educated and, perhaps, a little residuum of the old tradition amongst the poor, is sufficient to keep alive a feeling of insecurity about the lymph supply, (independently of other causes), which the assumption by the authorities of a finality in their arrangements on this head is not calculated to allay. This feeling, inten- sified by evil and mostly false rumours, vents itself in a vague suspicion of all vaccination, and is at the bottom of any strength which the anti-vaccinators possess—*