156 CLASSICS OF MODERN SCIENCE 



time receive it without the risk of infecting the rest, or of spreading 



a distemper that fills a country with terror. 



[Several instances have come under my observation which justify the 

 assertion that the disease cannot be propagated by effluvia. The first 

 boy whom I inoculated with the matter of Cow-pox slept in a bed while 

 the experiment was going forward, with two children who had never 

 gone through either that disease or the Small-pox, without infecting 

 either of them. 



A young woman who had the Cow-pox to a great extent, several 

 sores which maturated having appeared on the hands and wrists, slept 

 in the same bed with a fellow-dairymaid, who never had been infected 

 with either the Cow-pox or the Small-pox, but no indisposition fol- 

 lowed. 



Another instance has occurred of a young woman on whose hands 

 were several large suppurations from the Cow-pox, who was at the 

 same time a daily nurse to an infant, but the complaint was not com- 

 municated to the child.] 



In some other points of view the inoculation of this disease ap- 

 pears preferable to the variolous inoculation. 



In constitutions predisposed to scrofula, how frequently we see 

 the inoculated Small-pox rouse into activity that distressful malady. 

 This circumstance does not seem to depend on the manner in which 

 the distemper has shown itself, for it has as frequently happened 

 among those who have had it mildly, as when it has appeared in the 

 contrary way. There are many, who from some peculiarity in the 

 habit resist the common effects of variolous matter inserted into the 

 skin, and who are in consequence haunted through life with the dis- 

 tressing idea of being insecure from subsequent infection. A ready 

 mode of dissipating anxiety originating from such a cause must now 

 appear obvious. And, as we have seen that the constitution may at 

 any time be made to feel the fertile attack of Cow-pox, might it not, 

 in many chronic diseases, be introduced into the system, with the 

 probability of affording relief, upon well-known physiological prin- 

 ciples? 



Although I say the system may at any time be made to feel the 

 febrile attack of Cow-pox, yet I have a single instance before me 

 where the virus acted locally only, but it is not in the least probable 

 that the same person would resist the action both of Cow-pox virus 

 and the variolous. 



