Dr. Ainslie on Small-Pox mid Inoculation in Eastern Countries. 7 1 



behind. It has been affirmed, and I beUeve with truth, that the cow-pox 

 virus is rendered milder* by passing througli the human frame ; but this is 

 what I could never put to the proof in India, from not being able to find 

 the vesicle on the cattle : a fact which must lead to the caution of taking the 

 virus from time to time from the cow, in order to preserve, as much as pos- 

 sible, its peculiar quality. < 



The small-pox supervening to regular vaccination has been called the 

 modified disease,! and would appear to put on somewhat different appear- 

 ances, owing to causes which it is not necessary here to enumerate. During 

 my residence in India, after the introduction of the variola; vacci7icE into 

 that country, which was not more than twelve years, I never heard of a 

 single death occasioned by vaccination, nor by small-pox coming on after it ; 

 nor do I think that, in the same period of time, I witnessed more than four 

 well-marked cases of the modified disease. In three of these, the fever 

 previous to the eruption was very slight, in the fourth it was more severe j 

 but in all it disappeared, or nearly so, on the coming out of the eruption ; 

 that is to say, on the second or third day. The pustules, which did not in 

 any of the cases amount to more than one hundred, were generally small, 

 and contained a milk-like rather than a purulent fluid ; and, in place of 

 continuing to the eleventh or twelfth day before bursting, they dried and be- 

 came light brown crusts on the fourth day ; and there was this peculiarity in 

 every instance, and I am not aware that it has been ever noticed in Europe, 

 that there was a total want of that strong, singular, and rather loathsome 

 smell, which constantly attends the common small-pox when the pustules 

 are mature. 



Another modified eruptive malady, which I have oftener than once met 

 with in India, I can consider in no other light than as the hives (^empliyesis 

 globularis) changed in its nature by vaccination, as the affection has nearly 

 all the distinguishing symptoms of that disorder, as described by Dr. 

 Heberden,! but in a milder degree. In the modified complaint I could never 

 perceive any feverish symptoms whatever, with the exception of a little 

 restlessness in the child. About the second day, the pustules (if pustules 



* See Dr. Mason Good's Study of Medicine, vol. ii. page 59G. 



■|- For an excellent account of a varioloid epidemic which lately prevailed in Edinburgh and 

 other parts of Scotland, with observations on the identity of Chicken-pox and modified Small- 

 pox, see a work on the subject by Dr. John Thomson. 



X See Medical Transactions, vol. i. article xxii. 



