SMALL-POX. 289 



cases produced appearances with a perfect similarity to ordinary 

 vaccination. 



Thiele produced a benign vesicle in the following manner. 

 Variolous lymph was diluted with warm cow's milk, and inoculated 

 like ordinary vaccine lymph. Large vesicles resulted. There were 

 febrile symptoms from the third to the fourth day, and a secondary 

 onset of fever much more pronounced between the eleventh and 

 fourteenth days. The areola was strongly marked, and not con- 

 fined to the inoculated place, which was occasionally surrounded 

 by minute secondary vesicles. After watching through ten removes, 

 the vesicles finally assumed the characters of an ordinary vaccination 

 with cow-pox lymph. As soon as the secondary fever ceased to- 

 occur inoculation was practised from arm to arm without diluting 

 the lymph with cow's milk. The lymph was designated lacto-varioline, 

 and the result was variolation in its mildest form. The result of 

 variolating the cow will be discussed in another chapter. 



Small-pox inoculation, or variolation, protected the individual 

 when genuine small-pox was produced, and .endangered the com- 

 munity. Persons inoculated became centres of infection, and con- 

 veyed the disease to others. Haygarth, although in favour of 

 inoculation, strongly condemned its use without precautions to 

 prevent the spread of the disease. " The most serious and solid 

 objection," he wrote, " that has been advanced against inoculation 

 is deduced from a comparison of the Bills of Mortality for a series 

 of years in various places. They show that a larger proportion 

 of inhabitants have died of the small-pox in towns where it is prac- 

 tised than in the same before it was known, or in others where it is 

 prohibited." 



Even Dr. Dimsdale, an ardent inoculator, admitted that more 

 lives were lost in London than before inoculation commenced, and the 

 practice was more detrimental than beneficial to society ; and he 

 added: "The disease by general inoculation throughout London 

 spreads by visitors, strangers, servants, washerwomen, doctors, and 

 inoculators, by means of hackney coaches in which the sick are sent 

 out to take the air, or by sound persons approaching them in the 

 streets. The poor in London are miserably lodged ; their habitations 

 are in close alleys, courts, lanes, and old dirty houses ; they are often 

 in want of necessaries, even of bedding. The fathers and mothers 

 are employed constantly in laborious occupation abroad, and cannot 

 attend the inoculated sick." In 1798 Jenner, who had practised 

 small-pox inoculation, proposed the use of a benign non-infectious 

 lymph obtained from a disease of the cow or horse as a substitute 



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