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.

    8/48 (page 6)
    book contains the results of his investigations, and it is surpris- ing to learn how many medical men, within a comparatively small radius of Berkeley, had formed on this point the same opinion as Jenner. The following I have noted: — Mr Bragge, Axminster; Mr Downe, Bridport; Dr Pulteney, Blandford; Mr Henderson, Wendover; Mr Giffard, Gillingham; Prof. Wall, Oxford; Mr Dolling, Blandford; Dr Croft, Staffordshire; Mr Eolph, Peckham (formerly of Thornbnry in Gloucestershire); Mr Groves, Thornbury; Mr Wales, Downham (Norfolk); Dr Fowler, Sarum; and Mr Hughes, Stroudwater. Here is a sample of their evidence:— Mr Eolph says there is not a medical practitioner of even little experience in Gloucestershire, or scarce a dairy-farmer, who does not know from his own experience, or that of others, that persons who have suffered the cow-pox are exempted from the agency of the variolous poison. The late Mr Grove [Mr Eolph's colleague] was a very extensive small-pox inoculator, frequently having 200 to 300 patients at one time, and the fact of exemption now asserted had been long before his death abundantly established, by his experience of many scores of subjects who had jjreviously laboured under the cow-pox, being found insusceptible of the small-j^ox, either by inocidation or by efHuvia. While Mr Eolph practised at Thornbury, he thinks not fewer than threescore instances of failure in attempting to produce the small-pox inoculation occiirred in his own practice,all of which were persons who had Ijeen previously affected with the cow-pox. In almost all of these cases, the uninfected persons associated with those who took the small-pox, and many were repeatedly inoculated. Although Mr Eolph has not, in his recollection, any instances of people taking the small- pox who gave admissible evidence of their having laboured under the cow-pox, he thinks such cases may, and have indeed occurred to others, where the cow- pox had only been local. It is noteworthy that this same Mr Eolph, so early as 10th June 1795, or three years before Jenner's Inqxiiry, wrote to Dr Beddoes of Bristol on the same subject, and in a similar though less decided strain. So, too, Mr Bragge, many years before, had inoculated over 50 persons, of whom three had had cow-pox, and these he therefore charged with an abundance of matter, but to no purpose. Dr Pulteney stated that an intelligent and respectable inoculator had informed him that of several hundreds whom he had inoculated for the small-pox, who had previously had the cow-pox, very few took the infection ; and such as did, he had great room to believe, were themselves deceived in regard to their having had the cow- pox. Mr Downe said, A few years ago, when I inoculated a great number for the small-pox, I remarked that I could not, by any means, infect one or two of them, and on inquiry I was informed they had previously been infected with the cow-pox. Some few families who had been infected with the cow-pox were repeatedly inoculated with the matter of the small-pox. and without effect. Evidence of this sort could be largely added to, but enough has been given to show how far from the fact is Dr Creighton's opinion