A treatise on vaccination : being a description of its nature, its origin, and progress amongst the population of India / by Daniel Robert Thompson.

  • Thompson, Daniel Robert.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on vaccination : being a description of its nature, its origin, and progress amongst the population of India / by Daniel Robert Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/52 (page 4)
    from the disease enjoyed by some, and he discovered that there existed a belief among the people of that locality that those persons who became accidentally inoculated with the Cow-pox whilst engaged in milking cows, were protected from small-pox. And this no doubt was the clue to all his other investigations, the first of which, apparently, were directed to the kinds of eruption to which the teats of the cow were sus- ceptible : and by overcoming all the difficulties which at- tended a research prolonged over nearly twenty years, he succeeded in establishing the opinion that the Cow's teats were subject to a variety of eruptions, which were indis- criminately called cow-pox and in learning to distinguish between these, he ascertained that one variety alone pos- sessed the specific character of protecting the human body from small-pox, and this he called the True Cow-pox. He next saw that this True Cow-pox passed through regular and progressive changes, and that it was only at one period of its progress—when fully developed—that the virus within gained its specific character as a prophylactic agent against small-pox. It was whilst he was thus engaged, that he was struck with the idea of propagating the disease in man by inoculation of virus from the cow, and of then trans- ferring it-from one man to another; but it was not until a little more than twenty years after he first commenced his investigations, that he obtained the opportunity of submit- ting his ideas to a practical test. His first case which was publicly vaccinated, is recorded to have been on 14th May