154 EDWARD JENNER 



men and maid servants. One of the former having been 

 appointed to apply dressings to the heels of a horse affected 

 with the grease, and not paying due attention to cleanliness, 

 incautiously bears his part in milking the cows, with some 

 particles of the infectious matter adhering to his fingers. 

 When this is the case, it commonly happens that a disease 

 is communicated to the cows, and from the cows to the 

 dairymaids, which spreads through the farm until the most 

 of the cattle and domestics feel its unpleasant consequences. 

 This disease has obtained the name of the cow-pox. It 

 appears on the nipples of the cows in the form of irregular 

 pustules. At their first appearance they are commonly of a 

 palish blue, or rather of a colour somewhat approaching to 

 livid, and are surrounded by an erysipelatous inflammation. 

 These pustules, unless a timely remedy be applied, frequently 

 degenerate into phagedenic ulcers, which prove extremely 

 troublesome. 1 The animals become indisposed, and the 

 secretion of milk is much lessened. Inflamed spots now 

 begin to appear on different parts of the hands of the do- 

 mestics employed in milking, and sometimes on the wrists, 

 which quickly run on to suppuration, first assuming the 

 appearance of the small vesications produced by a burn. 

 Most commonly they appear about the joints of the fingers 

 and at their extremities ; but whatever parts are affected, 

 if the situation will admit, these superficial suppurations put 

 on a circular form, with their edges more elevated than their 

 centre, and of a colour distantly approaching to blue. 

 Absorption takes place, and tumours appear in each axilla. 

 The system becomes affected the pulse is quickened; and 

 shiverings, succeeded by heat, with general lassitude and 

 pains about the loins and limbs, with vomiting, come on. 

 The head is painful, and the patient is now and then even 

 affected with delirium. These symptoms, varying in their 

 degrees of violence, generally continue from one day to 

 three or four, leaving ulcerated sores about the hands, which, 

 from the sensibility of the parts, are very troublesome, and 

 commonly heal slowly, frequently becoming phagedenic, like 



2 They who attend sick cattle in this country find a speedy remedy for 

 stopping the progress of this complaint in those applications which act chem- 

 uly upon the morbid matter, such as the solutions of the vitriolura 



ically upon the morbid matter, such as the solutions of the vitnolum zinci 

 and the vitriolum cupri, etc. 





