Some observations on the varioloid disease, which has lately prevailed in Edinburgh, and on the identity of chicken-pox and modified small-pox, in a letter addressed to Dr Duncan, junior / by John Thomson.

  • Thomson, John, 1765-1846.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some observations on the varioloid disease, which has lately prevailed in Edinburgh, and on the identity of chicken-pox and modified small-pox, in a letter addressed to Dr Duncan, junior / by John Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    currence of this important fact, will be induced to communi- cate to the public an account of the circumstances in which they respectively saw it occur. It was my having seen the disease at first only in its mild form, and among those who had had small-pox or cow-pock, that induced me to believe, for a long time, that even the aggra- vated cases which presented themselves to my observation, could only be cases of chicken-pox ; and I was the more disposed to take this view of it, that I had formed a similar judgment with regard to an epidemical eruptive disease, which I saw prevailing extensively in the villages of Colinton, Slateford, and Currie, during the year 1809. The present epidemic appeared to me to re- semble in every particular that which I then had occasion to see, and which, from a careful comparison of its symptoms in the milder cases, with Dr Willan’s description of chicken pox, I had concluded to be that disease. I was the more confirmed in my belief of these epidemics being chicken-pox, from my observing at both periods two symptoms occur in several patients which have been regarded by Dr Willan and others as diagnostic of chicken-pox. I allude to the succession in the crops of the erup- tion, and the formation of vesications of greater or less extent, re- sembling those made by scalding water, occurring among, or in the interstices of the eruption, and producing the appearance which has been termed by some the swine-pox, and which, in treating of the diseases of the skin, 1 have been in the use of pointing out to my pupils as marks by which, in doubtful cases of small-pox or chicken pox, they might determine the true nature of the disease. I mention this circumstance with a view to show the reluctance and difficulty which I have had in adopting the conclusions that have forced themselves upon my mind, and which I shall now briefly state to you. 1st, I have been convinced, by the varieties which have ap. peared in the form, of this epidemic in the different individual- whom it has attacked, that the descriptions which have been given of the appearances and progress of the eruption in small- pox by our best systematic authors, are, in many respects, im- perfect ; that the diagnostic marks which have been pointed out between small-pox and the disease that has been termed chicken- pox, are not to be relied upon ; and that no applicable marks of distiriction between modified small-pox and chicken-pox have hitherto been established. My observation would lead me to believe, that the eruption which succeeds to cow-pock, has more of a vesicular or varicelloid appearance in infants, than it has in adults, while, in these again, it shows a disposition to become pustular, and exhibits more of the characters of small pox.