MARY BARGE, of Woodford, in this parish, was inoculated with variolous matter in the year 1791. An efflorescence of a palish red colour soon appeared about the parts where the matter was inserted, and spread itself rather extensively, but died away in a few days without producing any variolous symptoms[1]. She has since been repeatedly employed as a nurse to Small-pox patients, without experiencing any ill consequences. This woman had the Cow Pox when she lived in the service of a Farmer in this parish thirty-one years before.
[1]: It is remarkable that variolous matter, when the system is disposed to reject it, should excite inflammation on the part to which it is applied more speedily than when it produces the Small Pox. Indeed it becomes almost a criterion by which we can determine whether the infection will be received or not. It seems as if a change, which endures through life, had been produced in the action, or disposition to action, in the vessels of the skin; and it is remarkable too, that whether this change has been effected by the Small Pox, or the Cow Pox, that the disposition to sudden cuticular inflammation is the same on the application of variolous matter.
CASE V.
MRS. H—, a respectable Gentlewoman of this town, had the Cow Pox when very young. She received the infection in rather an uncommon manner: it was given by means of her handling some of the same utensils[1] which were in use among the servants of the family, who had the disease from milking infected cows. Her hands had many of the Cow-pox sores upon them, and they were communicated to her nose, which became inflamed and very much swoln. Soon after this event Mrs. H— was exposed to the contagion of the Small Pox, where it was scarcely possible for her to have escaped, had she been susceptible of it, as she regularly attended a relative who had the disease in so violent a degree that it proved fatal to him.
In the year 1778 the Small Pox prevailed very much at Berkeley, and Mrs. H— not feeling perfectly satisfied respecting her safety (no indisposition having followed her exposure to the Small Pox) I inoculated her with active variolous matter. The same appearance followed as in the preceding cases–an efflorescence on the arm without any effect on the constitution.
[1]: When the Cow Pox has prevailed in the dairy, it has often been communicated to those who have not milked the cows, by the handle of the milk pail.
CASE VI.
It is a fact so well known among our Dairy Farmers, that those who have had the Small Pox either escape the Cow Pox or are disposed to have it slightly; that as soon as the complaint shews itself among the cattle, assistants are procured, if possible, who are thus rendered less susceptible of it, otherwise the business of the farm could scarcely go forward.
In the month of May, 1796, the Cow Pox broke out at Mr. Baker's, a Farmer who lives near this place. The disease was communicated by means of a cow which was purchased in an infected state at a neighbouring fair, and not one of the Farmer's cows (consisting of thirty) which were at that time milked escaped the contagion. The family consisted of a man servant, two dairymaids, and a servant boy, who, with the Farmer himself, were twice a day employed in milking the cattle. The whole of this family, except Sarah Wynne, one of the dairymaids, had gone through the Small Pox. The consequence was, that the Farmer and the servant boy escaped the infection of the Cow Pox entirely, and the servant man and one of the maid servants had each of them nothing more than a sore on one of their fingers, which produced no disorder in the system. But the other dairymaid, Sarah Wynne, who never had the Small Pox, did not escape in so easy a manner. She caught the complaint from the cows, and was affected with the symptoms described in the 5th page in so violent a degree, that she was confined to her bed, and rendered incapable for several days of pursuing her ordinary vocations in the farm.
March 28th, 1797, I inoculated this girl, and carefully rubbed the variolous matter into two slight incisions made upon the left arm. A little inflammation appeared in the usual manner around the parts where the matter was inserted, but so early as the fifth day it vanished entirely without producing any effect on the system.