106 REPORT — 1839. 



About the month of February in the present year, the vesicle had 

 acquired a greater degree of firmness, and was seldom found to be 

 broken during the first week. The author observes, in reference to its 

 character at the time the paper was read, " at the present time a more 

 decided change has occurred ; the vesicles usually remain perfect through 

 their whole progress : erythematous eruptions, as well as abscess in the 

 axilla, and severe constitutional disturbance, are comparatively rare. I 

 am then able to state as a decided fact, that the lymph, now forty-eight 

 removes from the cow, has lost much of the intensity it possessed when 

 only fifteen degrees from its original source ; while at the same time it 

 retains all those appearances which Jenner describes as characteristic of 

 a perfect specimen of the disease." 



Full confirmation of the important fact was afforded the author in 

 the course of his vaccinations, that from some peculiarity of constitu- 

 tion, lymph taken from a perfect vesicle will produce a pock deficient in 

 some of the characteristics of the genuine vaccine disease, and that mat- 

 ter taken from this imperfect vesicle will produce others that are defec- 

 tive, so that in two or three transmissions the virus may become totally 

 degenerated. Such a fact being satisfactorily determined, it is idle to 

 theorize upon the eff'ect which frequent transmissions of virus may have 

 in ^'^ humanizing" it : the practical point suggested by it is of most con- 

 sequence — the importance of selecting perfect vesicles only for future 

 vaccinations. 



The paper concluded with a notice of the valuable series of experi- 

 ments made by Mr. Ceely of Aylesbury, and brought forward in a Re- 

 port of the Vaccination Section of the Provincial Medical Association 

 at their late meeting at Liverpool, by which it was proved that small- 

 pox matter inserted into the cow produced a vesicle in no respect di- 

 stinguishable from ordinary cox-pox, and yielding lymph, which, when 

 transferred to the arms of children, had produced the genuine vaccine 

 vesicle through twenty-four transmissions : thus confirming Jenner's 

 opinion of the identity of small-pox and cow-pox, and making a most 

 important contribution to the practice of vaccination by discovering an 

 easy method of producing the vaccine disease at any time when small- 

 pox prevailed. 



Sir James Murray continued the subject of his paper in the 

 Seventh Report of the Association, proving, by dissection, that cases 

 of torturing neuralgia depended in some instances upon the irritation 

 occasioned by a frost-work of microcosmic crystals deposited in the 

 nervous membranes ; which crystals, like the crystals of tinea and 

 lipra, or the discharges from ill-conditioned ulcers, he found to contain 

 a large proportion of urinary salts. Proofs were adduced that other 

 complaints and nervous affections originate from acids forming in the 

 stomach, and impregnating the tissues and circulating fluids with acri- 

 monious deposits, such as urate of soda: hence he condemned the 

 internal use of soda in such cases. 



It was further shown, that in those gouty and urinary sediments 

 which prevail after deranged digestion, ^wt^ magnesia was found for 



