The experiments made on four beasts, by tying over their heads part of distempered hides, or pieces of linen and woollen cloth or silk, which had received the breath and steams of dying cattle, serve to shew, by the bullock’s forcing off the cloth tied about him, that the putrid stench was disagreeable to him; but that neither his blood, nor that of the other three beasts, was then in a state to receive the infection.
With regard to the pustules, which the Marquis relates were mixed with oats and bran, or dissolved in white wine; the distempered bile, which was mixed with milk; milk taken from diseased cows; water, in which part of a distempered hide had been steeped; and the precaution taken to force these mixtures into the paunch of calves, by means of a funnel, whose end was covered with a piece of raw distempered skin, that the beast might both swallow and suck in the disease. All these experiments could have no other effect than what followed; which was, that the acrimony of the distempered bile created first a nausea, and then produced a violent scouring, which killed the beast, leaving marks of its irritation on the intestines.
The practice of inoculation is but lately followed, and even now but little known, in the provinces of France. Its advantages have not long since been strangely disputed at Paris. In the case of inoculating cattle, instead of a slip of raw hide taken from a beast just dead, or putting a pustule into the neck, they should either have passed in the dewlap cotton or silk dipped in well-digested pus, or have inserted in proper incisions cotton-thread or silk soaked with pus either on the shoulders or buttocks; the true way of inoculating in the English manner. Some persons have indeed thought, that to inoculate with the blood of the infected would answer the intention; but most of the modern practitioners chuse to depend on digested matter.
Several constitutions will not receive infection, let them be inoculated ever so judiciously. A Ranby, a Hawkins, a Middleton, and other inoculators, will tell us, that the incisions have sometimes suppurated so much, and pustules have appeared round the edges of the wound, without any other particular marks of the disease; and yet the patient has never had the small-pox afterwards. The Marquis mentions an instance somewhat of the same kind in his first Memoir, p. 147.
The examination of these very important and interesting particulars has, I observe, drawn me into a prolixity, which I fear may prove tedious to your Lordship: but should I have removed all doubts, and brought convincing proofs of the absurdity of fearing a second infection; should I have shewn inoculation to be a necessary practice, and that the contagious distemper may be communicated more ways than one; I hope your Lordship will excuse the length of this letter. I shall only add my earnest wishes, that the legislature may, by effectual means, prevent the importation of distempered cattle and hides into these kingdoms; the only means of naturalizing and perpetuating a dreadful distemper, now, thank God! much decreased among us.
I am, with the greatest respect,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s
Most humble and most obedient Servant,
Daniel Peter Layard.
Huntingdon, 26 Nov. 1757.