Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband.

  • Husband, William, 1822-1901.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    other words, that it retains its virtue unimpaired for months and years—is now well ascertained. It is a fact admitted on all hands by the members of the Medical profession in Edinburgh, and one to the truth of which many of their number are ready to testify from their own observation. I had an opportunity, in the month of August last, of showing to Mr Ceely several perfectly successful vac¬ cinations with lymph which had been hermetically sealed up for five, six, and seven years. Mr Ceely saw in one case the cicatrix, from which the crust had just dropped, of a vesicle produced by lymph, dated April 17, 1852—- that is, seven years and three months old. He also saw vesicles in progress towards maturity, which had been pro¬ duced, in two cases, from lymph dated February 2, 1853, or six and a half years old. In another case, the lymph was dated May 13, 1854, and was therefore five years and three months old; in other two cases, it was dated March 1858, and was therefore one year and seven months old; in another, September 1858, and therefore eleven months old. I omit mentioning other cases shown to him, in which the lymph used had been kept for shorter periods. But here were seven successful vaccinations in different stages of progress, in which the lymph employed was from one to seven years old. Such an occurrence is, I suppose, unex¬ ampled in the history of vaccination. Solitary instances of the kind have happened before, and been cited as marvels. But a succession of such, occurring within the space of a few days—most of them, indeed, contemporaneously—may well fix our attention, not surely as something extraordinary and to be wondered at and forgotten, but as pointing us to results of great practical importance.