Observations addressed to the public in general on the cow-pox : shewing that it originates in scrophula, commonly called the evil; illustrated with cases to prove that it is no security against the small-pox ... To which are added observations on the small-pox inoculation.

  • Squirrell, R. (Robert)
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations addressed to the public in general on the cow-pox : shewing that it originates in scrophula, commonly called the evil; illustrated with cases to prove that it is no security against the small-pox ... To which are added observations on the small-pox inoculation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/80 (page 14)
    When there is no predis¬ position in the animal, it is easily cured. When there is a predispo¬ sition united to the occasional cause, the cure of this disease will, in a great measure, de¬ pend upon alterative medi¬ cines. This analogical table points out a similitude be^- tween the two diseases; and any common observer must be convinced, that the grease of the heels of the horse, and the scrophula, when it affects the joints of the human subject, are one and the same disease. They arise from the same causes, and re¬ quire medicines, and applications, from the same class of the materia medica. Any of the above occasional causes, being ap¬ plied, excite or call forth the predisposing cause into action, and they both unite and produce the proximate cause : consequently, the grease, without which the natural disposition would have been quiescent or dormant, and produced no effect what¬ ever; nor would the occasional cause, by itself, have induced the disease under the same circum¬ stance. Hence the reason why one horse will have the disease, and another, which shall be exposed to the same or stronger occasional cause, not be af¬ fected. In short, very few horses, which have this predisposition, escape the grease ; but, on the con¬ trary, amongst those horses which have not this temperament, the disease is seldom found. I hope the reader will recollect, that this is the infectious f matter, issuing from a scrophulous ulcer, which is communicated to the teat of the cow, thence Wnen mere is no preens-* position, it soon yields to pro¬ per applications. Where the occasional cause has brought the predisposition into action, the cure will, in a great measure, depend upon alterative medicines.