460 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



for the persons in the vicinity. More than once they have been the 

 starting point of epidemics. 



In spite of these limitations, variolation rendered great services. 

 It v^as introduced little by little into Persia, then into Turkey. In 

 1721 the wife of the English ambassador at Constantinople, Lady 

 Montague, who witnessed the results obtained by this procedure, 

 made it known on her return to London. The new method spread 

 rapidly and was very happily modified by two Scotch farmers, the 

 Suttey brothers, who invented the subepidermic inoculations. 



Variolation has to-day only a historic interest. It has retreated 

 before another procedure which was introduced into science at the 

 end of the eighteenth century. It had been known for a long time 

 that in certain regions in England, and notably in the county of 

 Gloucestershire, that persons who have the direct care of cattle often 

 have on their fingers small pustules contracted by contact with ani- 

 mals attacked by cowpox, and that this eruption gave them immunity 

 against, smallpox. In 1768 Sutton and Fewster drew attention to 

 these facts, and it was then that Jenner conceived the idea of prac- 

 ticing systematically, in the interest of prophylaxis, the inoculation 

 of cowpox. In 1798 the results of these researches were made 

 known. It was established that the virus coming from the cow is 

 inocuable in man ; that it may be transmitted from man to man, keep- 

 ing its fundamental characteristics, for when reinoculated in the cow 

 it produced again the characteristic eruption. Finally, inoculation 

 with the virus taken from a cow or from a man previously inoculated, 

 confers immunity against smallpox. The objection was raised that 

 the resistance was not perfect ; that several inoculated subjects later 

 contracted the disease. But it came in a mild form and turned off 

 shortly before the period of suppuration, taking a special form, which 

 has given it the name of chickenpox. 



The discovery of Jenner brought up an interesting problem which 

 has not yet been solved. Can the disease of the cow, or vaccine 

 {vacca^ cow), be considered as a special infection, or should it be 

 regarded as a variolous infection modified by a long series of pas- 

 sages through the Bovidee? The majority of French scholars agree 

 in keeping the two separate. In Germany and Switzerland re- 

 searches have been carried on tending to establish the fact that the 

 variolous virus can be transformed into vaccinal virus. Whatever 

 solution may be finally adopted, it can be stated that inoculation 

 with vaccine was the first instance of a prophylactic inoculation 

 which was efficacious and harmless. Wliether vaccine is a special 

 virus or a modified variolous virus, it produces in man a local erup- 

 tion which becomes general only in exceptional cases, and in these 

 cases only in a very milB. form. 



