Dr. C. Creighton, M.D. and vaccination : a review / by J. McVail.

  • McVail, John C. (John Christie), 1849-1926.
Date:
1890
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. C. Creighton, M.D. and vaccination : a review / by J. McVail. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    doctor's own airy plirase in the above extract, it is all the same to him. Turning from this medley of contradiction to the plain facts of the case, we find that this lymph, which had been so mild at home, caused bad symptoms on the very first case abroad. But in the interval, we have the significant fact that it had been preserved on a thread through the long sea and land journey. Next we have Waterhouse's realistic description of the foul shirt-sleeve and the poisonous matter from an open ulcer long after the specific virus was annihilated. This, to Dr Creighton, is, of course, sophistical. Of course! And of course, too, his own theory of reversion to a type which had never existed is not sophistical. It is the scientific explanation. Science, forsooth! And what a contrast does the story afford us between the science of the critic, Dr Creighton, and the sophistry (save the mark) of the mucli-criticised Jenner, who, living in days long before telegraphs or steamboats were heard of, longed for a speaking-trumpet to carry across the wide ocean that message of advice which to this day is the golden rule of vaccination practice. Following Dr Creighton in his relation of some of the bad re- sults obtained by the early vaccinators, the observations which I have already made continue applicable. Indeed, in Jenner's early practice we find pretty much what might be expected if his early procedure (before he had discovered the golden rule) were adopted by any one in the present day. To begin with, the best lymph direct from the cow is apt to produce a more severe disease than humanized lymph, the effects on the arm being relative to the soil on which it had been raised. Next, the filth, the pus, the decomposing blood, the ichorous discharge from neigh- bouring ulcers on indurated bases, were so intimately mixed up with the liquid lymph itself, or with what had been liquid lymph but had dried into a crust, that the disease produced could not but have characters which were the compound effect of a com- pound cause. Nor is it surprising that such characters were not got rid of at the first or second remove. Then we have the late period at which the lymph was taken. In Darke's cases, specially referred to by Dr Creighton as being of great severity, we find that the lymph used had been taken on the twelfth day from a vesicle, as to which Dr Creighton himself tells us the areola was out, and there were a number of very minute confluent pustules round the big cow-pox vesicle. In another example, with matter taken on the twelfth day Jenner inoculated Mary Hearn, the consequence being an areola on the fourteenth day and an ulcerous state of the arm for some time after (p. 93, Jemur and Vaccination). Again, Dr Creighton enlarges on Thornton's experience. That prac- titioner found a milker with sores on his hands, one of which was still in the unbroken form of a pock, all the others having degenerated into sordid and painful ulcers, though only five days