248 



Scientific Proceedings (115). 



125 (1707) 



Inoculation of alastrim or West Indian smallpox. 



By J. P. LEAKE and J. N. FORCE. 



[From the Hygienic Laboratory, U. S. Public Health Service, 

 Washington, D. C] 



For about twenty years there has been observed in tropical 

 and subtropical America an eruptive disease of very low mortality, 

 the identity of which with smallpox has been a subject of ques- 

 tion, especially since previous epidemics of smallpox in these 

 regions have been attended with high mortality. This disease 

 outside the United States has been variously termed alastrim, 

 varioloid varicella, and kaffir pox. It has been asserted that 

 a point of difference between this disease and true smallpox was 

 the resistance of lower animals to inoculation; no positive result 

 from inoculation with West Indian or South American strains 

 has been reported in any of the available literature, though Aragao 1 

 described the development of Guarnieri bodies in the cornea of 

 rabbits inoculated with this disease. 



Through Professor W. G. MacCallum, of Johns Hopkins 

 Medical School, pustule contents preserved in 0.5 per cent, phenol 

 at a low temperature for several months, were obtained from two 

 Jamaican cases; also through Lt. Com. G. F. Clark, U. S. N., crusts, 

 preserved dry for two weeks, were obtained from a case in Haiti. 

 These were used for the cutaneous inoculation of two Macacus 

 rhesus, which showed no reaction other than a serous exudate 

 at the site of inoculation for eight days, when an eruption de- 

 veloped at two of the three sites of inoculation on each monkey. 

 The second of the two Jamaican viruses gave no result on either 

 monkey. The typical lesion consisted of a papule with reddened 

 periphery surrounding a white area with a brownish depressed 

 center. The lesions were discrete, five to eight in number in 

 three of the sites inoculated, and confluent in the fourth. No 

 complete vesiculation appeared, but the itching was evidently 

 severe, since the monkeys abracted the tops of the lesions. These 



1 Aragao, "A proposito do Alastrim," Brazil medico, March 15, 191 1. Rev. in 

 Bui'. Inst. Past., 191 1, ix, 942. 



