Cheap tract on the cow-pox. A plain statement of facts, in favour of the cow-pox, intended for circulation through the middle and lower classes of society / [John Thomson].

  • Thomson, John, active 1809.
Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cheap tract on the cow-pox. A plain statement of facts, in favour of the cow-pox, intended for circulation through the middle and lower classes of society / [John Thomson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Not one fatal case of Cow fox has yet occurred. Though by inoculation tor the Small-pox the chance in favour of the in¬ dividual was encieased, yet the number of deaths on the whole was much increased^ because the Small-pox being contagious the sources of infection were increased. Free exposure to fresh air formed the great improvement in the treatment of Small-pox ; but by this exposure, the uninfected became ex¬ posed to infection, and the air became full of contagion. Inoculation, therefore, though a partial and individual good^ was 2l general evil. The late Government of France forbade it by law. Dr. Jurin,(33) shews from the bills of mortality for eighty-four years, that for forty-two years before inoculation for the Small-pox took place, seventy-two deaths in every thou¬ sand were from the Small-pox ; but in the next forty-two years after the inoculation, the deaths amounted to eighty-nine ia every thousand. In the first twelve years it was seventy-four in every thousand; in the next ien years it was eighty-three; in the next ninety-six; and in the last ten years it was one hundred and nine in every thousand. Thus by the spreading of the disease by inoculation, the number of deaths in forty- two years increased thirty-seven in every thousand. It has been calculated that in twenty five y'-ears Europe has lost FIFTEEN MILLIONS of inhabitants by this disease. In America the natural Small-pox is still more fatal, and it has tnken off twenty, thirty, and even forty in every hundred. Every inoculation for the Small-pox tends thus to destroy life, and to perpetuate that loathsome disease, whilst every inocula¬ tion for the Cow-pox tends to preserve life, to destroy the Small-pox, and in time to render even the Cow-pox inocula¬ tion itself unnecessary. In some families Small-pox is par¬ ticularly severe, and in some constitutions it certainly called forth the king's evil and other diseases of a dangerous kind. This was the consecjuence of the disease and not of the inocu^ lation, for it lollowed more frequently and more surely the natural SimW-^ox Another frequent effect of Small-pox is either total blindness or partial loss of sight. In one establishment in London for the blind, out of thirty-four, fourteen owed their blindness to the Small pox. Dr. Beer, a celebrated oculist at Vienna, (where the Cow-pox was early and generally adopted,) did not meet with a single case of disease of the eye from Small pox, for two years, though before the Cpw-pox was practised, he met with not less than fifty cases every year.(3^) Against xhoi Small-pox inoculation some argued, that though the disease was made much milder, though it was three hundred to one in (33) Fhih Trans. (34} A. 81. (35) L, x. 243.