The principles and practice of medicine : founded on the most extensive experience in public hospitals and private practice; and developed in a course of lectures delivered at University College, London / by John Elliotson ... ; with notes and illustrations by Nathaniel Rogers.

  • John Elliotson
Date:
1839
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of medicine : founded on the most extensive experience in public hospitals and private practice; and developed in a course of lectures delivered at University College, London / by John Elliotson ... ; with notes and illustrations by Nathaniel Rogers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    affection, it is singular that the mother may communicate it to the child, without having it herself. Dr. Jenner published, in the first volume of the “ Medico-Chirurgical Transactions,” instances of two women who were exposed to the contagion of small-pox, a few days before delivery. Both women were, I believe, exposed to it by infection; but one woman had had the affection formerly, and there- fore she had acquired an immunity; and the other had been inocu- lated, so that she also had acquired an immunity. Neither of the mothers had the disease a second time: and therefore they served merely as transmitters of the poison to their children. In the one instance, the disease appeared in the child on the seventh day after birth; and the other female brought forth a child covered with the small-pox. Dr. Mead, in his “ Treatise on Variola,” you will find mentions a similar fact. However, this has not always been the case; for Sir George Baker mentions that two women, who took the disease during pregnancy, brought forth children perfectly healthy; and the latter never had small-pox till they were inoculated; which did not take place till they were three years old. I do not know whether a woman can give syphilis to a child, without the disease affecting herself;—whether she can have the poison conveyed to her system by a man, and yet have no symptoms of the disease, and nevertheless produce a child affected with syphilis. In my experience, wherever syphilis has appeared in a child at its birth, or soon after- wards, the mother has shewn syphilitic symptoms, either then or soon after. It is, however, to be remembered, that we have no immunity from syphilis. We have immunity from small-pox and cow-pock, in consequence of the disease having occurred previously; and when immunity can be produced from a poison, then you see that the system may transmit it, being yet perfectly safe itself. As to the period at which the disease appears after exposure to the poison, the late Professor of Botany in Edinburgh (Dr. Ruther- ford) used to say that a party of soldiers were exposed to it, in the natural way; and that the interval between their exposure, and the appearance of the disease, varied from twelve to fourteen days. Dr. Fordyce, who paid great attention to this subject, said that the period which I have now stated was the common interval. However, it is certainly known sometimes to come out earlier. Like other infec- tious diseases, it is very frequently epidemic; and it is more fre- quently so at the vernal equinox, than at any other time. It is said, by Sir Gilbert Blane, to resemble measles and hooping-cough, in being more fatal during an epidemic than at any other time. After it has been absent some time, it is also more severe than at other periods. It is also observed to be like all other epidemics in another respect; those who have it first, have it most severely. It is said that this was not known by the ancients to be a con- tagious disease ; and, indeed, they confounded measles, scarlet-fever, and small-pox together. Rhazes, an Arabian, and one of the oldest writers on the subject, ascribes it to the fermentation which the blood