264 THE OX AND THE DAIRY. 



tice of vaccination, as a preservative from the attack of that 

 destructive scourge of the human race, the small-pox. The 

 experiments of this philosophic man were begun in 1797 and 

 published in 1798. He had observed that cows were subject 

 to a certain infectious eruption of the teats, and that those 

 persons who became affected by it, while milking the cattle, 

 escaped the small-pox raging around them. This fact, known 

 to farmers from time immemorial, led him to a course of 

 experiments, the result of which all are acquainted with 

 Yet in one opinion, an opinion in which many medical men 

 of the highest eminence have coincided, Dr. Jenner appears 

 to have been wrong. He regarded the cow-pox not as an 

 original disease of the cow itself, but as one communicated to 

 that animal from the horse. He conceived that the sanious 

 fluid of the disease of the heels, called grease, so common in 

 horses, was the source of the pustular eruption in question. 

 Cows, feeding in the same pasture with horses thus affected, 

 might lie down on the spots where the sanious discharge from 

 the grease had dripped, and in this manner the teats might 

 become inoculated ; or persons who had dressed or rubbed 

 the heels of horses might with unwashed hands engage in 

 milking the cows, and thus inoculate them. But query, 

 Will the matter of grease produce the cow-pox in man or 

 animals ? Will inoculation from the diseased heels of 

 the horse produce in the human subject the true cow-pox 

 pustule, and exemption from small-pox? Inoculation with 

 this matter may indeed produce a pustular disease, but not 

 cow-pox. It may produce unpleasant sores, and convert 

 simple cuts into festering wounds ; these, however, in no re- 

 spect bear any analogy to the vaccine disease. Various experi- 

 ments have been made on the subject by Woodville, Simmons, 

 Professor Coleman of the Veterinary College, Bartholini, 

 Dr. Pearson, and others, which demonstrate the error of the 

 theory; and though there may be some few medical men 

 who yet retain the opinion, it has been abandoned by those 

 who have closely investigated the subject. The two diseases, 

 as the veterinary surgeon well knows, have nothing in 

 common between them. 



The cow is subject to two kinds of pustular eruption on 

 the teats, both infectious, and usually comprehended under 

 the same name ; but of these one only must be regarded as 

 the genuine cow-pox. In the spurious disease the pustules 

 are small arid of irregular shape ; in the genuine disease 



