Here my researches were interrupted till the spring of the year 1798, when from the wetness of the early part of the season, many of the farmers' horses in this neighbourhood were affected with sore heels, in consequence of which the Cow-pox broke out among several of our dairies, which afforded me an opportunity of making further observations upon this curious disease.
A mare, the property of a person who keeps a dairy in a neighbouring parish, began to have sore heels the latter end of the month of February 1798, which were occasionally washed by the servant men of the farm, Thomas Virgoe, William Wherret, and William Haynes, who in consequence became affected with sores in their hands, followed by inflamed lymphatic glands in the arms and axillæ, shiverings succeeded by heat, lassitude and general pains in the limbs. A single paroxysm terminated the disease; for within twenty-four hours they were free from general indisposition, nothing remaining but the sores on their hands. Haynes and Virgoe, who had gone through the Small-pox from inoculation, described their feelings as very similar to those which affected them on sickening with that malady. Wherret never had had the Small-pox. Haynes was daily employed as one of the milkers at the farm, and the disease began to shew itself among the cows about ten days after he first assisted in washing the mare's heels. Their nipples became sore in the usual way, with blueish pustules; but as remedies were early applied they did not ulcerate to any extent.
[1]: From the sore on the hand of Sarah Nelmes.–See the [preceding case] and the [plate].
CASE XVIII.
JOHN BAKER, a child of five years old, was inoculated March 16, 1798, with matter taken from a pustule on the hand of Thomas Virgoe, one of the servants who had been infected from the mare's heels. He became ill on the 6th day with symptoms similar to those excited by Cow-pox matter. On the 8th day he was free from indisposition.
There was some variation in the appearance of the pustule on the arm. Although it somewhat resembled a Small-pox pustule, yet its similitude was not so conspicuous as when excited by matter from the nipple of the cow, or when the matter has passed from thence through the medium of the human subject.–(See[ Plate, No. 2].)
This experiment was made to ascertain the progress and subsequent effects of the disease when thus propagated. We have seen that the virus from the horse, when it proves infectious to the human subject is not to be relied upon as rendering the system secure from variolous infection, but that the matter produced by it upon the nipple of the cow is perfectly so. Whether its passing from the horse through the human constitution, as in the present instance, will produce a similar effect, remains to be decided. This would now have been effected, but the boy was rendered unfit for inoculation from having felt the effects of a contagious fever in a work-house, soon after this experiment was made.