Notes on vaccination : essay LV / by William Sharp.

Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on vaccination : essay LV / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Being too weak from old age to appear before the Com- mission and give viva voce evidence, I beg leave to offer, with great respect, a few brief notes on each of the five points to which the attention of the Commission has been directed. It will not, I think, be time misspent if a few minutes are first occupied in recalling some of the facts of the early stages of the practice of vaccination. It is well known that in Europe for some centuries the small-pox was the most dreaded of all diseases. It was estimated that from one in five to one in three was the common mortality of the epidemics, and in addition, nearly all of those who did not die, had their faces dis- figured by its pits. The first step that was taken in the direction of the mitigation and prevention of small-pox was inoculation —the voluntary submission to having the disease thus given, in the belief that the attack would be much milder and much less fatal. This was early in the last century. It was brought from Constantinople, especially by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. At the close of the century the general belief of the medical profession was expressed in these words :—“ Inoculation for the small-pox seems to be so well understood, that there is very little need for a substitute.” The condition at that time was really this—the individuals inoculated commonly escaped, but the prevalence of small-pox was greatly increased by the persons inoculated becoming centres of infection, so that the total mortality from the disease was in excess of what it had been before the adoption of the practice. The second step was then taken by Dr. Edward Jenner, a young physician in Gloucestershire, who had been taught to observe and experiment by John Hunter. His first publication was in June 1798. He had found it a tradition in the country, that dairy maids, who had con- tracted an eruption on their hands and arms from a similar eruption on the cows they milked, were protected from small-pox; he was led to experiment upon this supposed fact, and found it to be true, and not only this, but the additional fact that persons inoculated from the vesicles on the hands of the dairy maid had a similar eruption, and were similarly protected. In his pamphlet he describes the symptoms in the cow, and in the human subject, and details twenty-three cases, tending to prove