Hints on smallpox and its antidote. Addressed to the opponents of revaccination / by R. Pairman, Surgeon, Biggar.

  • Pairman, R.
Date:
[1872]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints on smallpox and its antidote. Addressed to the opponents of revaccination / by R. Pairman, Surgeon, Biggar. 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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    ( PRINTED FOR GRATUITOUS DISTRIBUTION IN THE BIGGAR DISTRICT. J HINTS ON SMALLPOX AND ITS ANTIDOTE. ADDRESSED TO THE OPPONENTS OF REVACCINATION BY R. PAIRMAN, SURGEON, BIGGAR. TN a tract for the times, it would be easy to blow ^ a medical trumpet, and by stirring appeals endeavour to arouse the apathetic, or frighten the refractory into duty. We prefer, in a calm and simple way, to state a few facts and general princi- ples, such as all heads of families ought to know in the present crisis. Smallpox arises from the reception into the system of a subtle poison. After catching the in- fection, the usual course of the disease is this:— There are first twelve days of incubation, during which the patient feels comparatively well, and the poison is being hatched or matured in the blood. Then fever suddenly sets in, which continues of a smart character for two days, or until the eruption begins to show itself. In the early stage of the incubation period only can the poison, once imbibed, be met and overpowered. Why, as a general rule, persons are susceptible of this disease only once in a lifetime, is involved in mystery. Apparently two things are essential for its production:—(1.) The poison; (2.) Some principle in the blood, coalescing with this poison, which one attack either wholly or partially exhausts. As if a farmer were to sow some seeds in a particu- lar soil, rich in some ingredient requisite for their germination. The first crop might so exhaust this ingredient that subsequent sowings would be in vain. But there is this difference between the cases. Whereas in the earthy soil the requisite principle could never grow again of its own accord, the soil of the human blood seems to have the power of re- producing it to some extent, so that in the lapse of years the seed of Smallpox virus may again take root. About a hundred years ago Dr. Jenner discovered that this principle in the blood could in great meas- ure be exhausted by a much milder poison than that of Smallpox, viz. that of Cowpox or Vaccinia. The occasion was this. At a time when Smallpox produced great ravages in our own and other lands, and while Jenner was still an apprentice to a Sur- geon in Sodbury, a notion prevailed among the peasantry, that the Milkmaids employed in the dairies of Gloucestershire, who were constantly getting a kind of pock on their hands from the ud- ders of the cows, escaped the Smallpox. Catching hold of this popular notion, he investigated into its truth, found it to be correct, and at length conceived the grand idea, that as this Cowpox could be com- municated to man at pleasure, why not from one person to another, so as to grant to all and sundry the same immunity from this terrible scourge as these same milkmaids had so long enjoyed. Fully aware of the vastness of the boon he was conferring on the world, if his ideas stood the test of expe- rience, Jenner did not rush rashly into print the moment the grand thought occurred to him, but investigated the matter for nearly thirty years, till in 1798 he published to the world that master- piece of medical induction, his immortal work an- nouncing his discovery. Jenner himself nevter believed that Vaccination would be a certain preventive of Smallpox in all individuals and under all circumstances, but that it would confer the same immunity, neither more nor less, that a previous attack of smallpox does; in fact that the Cowpox virus is just the Smallpox virus modified by transmission through the Cow; and that Vaccination, thoroughly done so as to in- fect the blood, was virtually a mild attack of Small- pox. The identity of the two poisons has, since his day, been sufficiently established by direct experi- ment. Cows have frequently been inoculated with the lymph of Smallpox from the human subject, ordinary Covrpox has been produced, and from the resulting vesicles a supply of lymph abstracted for vaccination purposes. In 1830 again, Dr. Sonder- land, of Barmen, brought on ordinary Cowpox on cows, not by inoculation, but by enveloping them in blankets taken from the bed of a Smallpox patient; and the lymph taken from these cows produced genuine vaccine vesicles in the human