Vaccination 91 



purpose of preventing smallpox. The Chinese method of 

 experimentally producing variolous infection was very crude 

 and consisted in introducing crusts from cases of variola 

 into the nose, and tying them upon the skin. The Turkish 

 method was much more neat, in that a small quantity of 

 the variolous pus was introduced into a scarification upon 

 the skin of the individual to be protected. Lady Montague, 

 wife of the British Ambassador, brought the so-called 

 "inoculation" method of preventing smallpox from Turkey 

 in the early part of the eightheenth century (1718). By both 

 methods the very disease, variola, against which protection 

 was desired, was occasioned, the only advantage of the 

 experimental over the accidental infection being that by 

 selecting the infective virus from a mild case of variola, by 

 performing the operation at a time when no epidemic of the 

 disease was raging, and by doing it at a time when the person 

 infected was in the most perfect physical condition, the dan- 

 gers of the malady might be mitigated. 



There was always danger, however, that the induced 

 disease being true variola might prove unexpectedly severe, 

 and that each inoculated individual, suffering from the con- 

 tagious disease, might start an epidemic. 



2. Vaccination: In 1791 a country schoolmaster named 

 Plett, living in the town of Starkendorf near Kiel in Germany, 

 seems to have made the first endeavor to subject the oft- 

 repeated observation that persons who had acquired cow-pox 

 did not subsequently become infected with smallpox, to 

 experimental demonstration by inserting cow-pox virus 

 into three children, all of whom escaped smallpox. 



The father of vaccination, and the man to whom the world 

 owes one of its greatest debts, was Edward Jenner, who 

 performed his first experiment on May 14, 1796, when he 

 transferred some of the contents of a cow-pox pustule on 

 the arm of a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmess to the arm of 

 a boy named John Phips. After the lad had recovered from 

 the experimental cow-pox thus produced, he subsequently 

 introduced smallpox pus into his arm and found him fully 

 immunized and rendered insusceptible to the disease. This 

 led Jenner to perform -many other experiments, and record 

 his observations in numerous scientific memoirs. The 

 success of his work immediately attracted the attention of 

 both scientific investigators and sanitarians, and its out- 

 come has been the establishment of compulsory vaccination 



