Cheap tract on the cow-pox. A plain statement of facts, in favour of the cow-pox, intended for circulation through the middle and lower classes of society / [John Thomson].

  • Thomson, John, active 1809.
Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cheap tract on the cow-pox. A plain statement of facts, in favour of the cow-pox, intended for circulation through the middle and lower classes of society / [John Thomson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    kernels in bis neck gathered and burst, and they have run cor¬ ruption ever since. Til try no more of your new fancies!’' Enquire further, and you v*^ill find that Poor Dick was indeed inoculated for the Cow-pox, but he did not take it ; his arm was well in a day or two ; they did nothing more to him ; they did not take him again to the person who inoculated him : of course Poor Dick was no more secure against the Small-pox, than if his mother’s knitting-needle had run into his arm by chance, or the kitten or little Mary had scratched it. Yet when Small¬ pox has happened after such cases as these, Cow-pox has been blamed. Many of the first inoculators also mistook a spurious, false kind of Cow-pox for the true pox.^ They were some¬ what alike, and might be mistaken by those not on their guard.f That they were mistaken is beyond all doubt. This spurious false pox is no more a security from the Small pox, than the chicken-pox or the itch is; yet Cow-pox has been blamed when Small pox has succeeded after sucii cases as these. This fact, and the knowledge and attention which the Cow-pox requires to observe it in its different stages, and to be sure of it, point out the necessity of confining the inoculation of the Cow-pox to medical men. These gentlemen might be slow in some places to adopt the Cow-pox, but on full and deliberate enquiry, they have almost universally adopted it, and it is now certainly safest and best in their hands. 1 do not say this from a desire to make the simple operation for inoculation of more consequence than it really is, for nothing can be more simple, or the Cow-pox itself a formidable disease, for nothing can be more mild and harmless ; but from a knowledge of the mischief that has happened by the contrary practice. I do not mean to say that medical men themselves did not commit the same mistakes, for I believe they did, and it was likely to be the case at first. But now so many opportunities of observation have they had, and so many excellent books have been written on it, that the like mistakes cannot happen again. In inoculating the children of the rich they undertake the management and responsibility, and are therefore entitled to their reward. The poor are inoculated gratis at all Infirmaries and Dispensaries, and by all private practitioners also, tor they are not such miserable and greedy wretches, as to screw the last six-pence from the clenched grasp of the poor. Another source of failure sprung from the same fource. The neceffity of obferving the feveral flages of the Cow-pox not having been fufficiently urged, it was the habijt in fome cafes where two or three chil¬ dren of a village or neighbourhood were inoculated, for the * Thus Dr Odier, of Geneva, Inoculated twenty children with matter taken from a nobleman, who previously had had the Small-pox. They had a spurious kind. Seventeen of the twenty were inoculated with the Small-pox, which they took and did well. The remaining three look the Small-pox naturally ^nd died.