A review of Mr. Brown's work on vaccination / extracted from the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, and re-published by order of the gentlemen who super-intend the Cow-Pock Institution, in Sackville Street, Dublin. [Anon].

Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A review of Mr. Brown's work on vaccination / extracted from the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, and re-published by order of the gentlemen who super-intend the Cow-Pock Institution, in Sackville Street, Dublin. [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/18 (page 13)
    Now, on referring to Willan, it will be found, that this pretended continuous extract is not simply garbled and mutilated, but is absolu¬ tely fabricated. It consists of two lines from the pSth page of Willan, then a phrase of Mr Brown’s then a mutilated passage from the 87th page, then a long ungrammatical addition to it of Mr B,’s composition, and, lastly, a shbrt sentence from the g5th page again ! When such liberties are taken, when the inaccuracy is easily detected, and the perversion of the sense of a Jiving author will unquestionably produce exposure, Mr B.’s uncorroborated testimony must be received with caution, whether he presents himself to us as an observer, or as the historian of the observations and opinions of others. But to return from this digression, into which we were naturally led, by the strange manner in which Mr B. has quoted Dr Willan’s des¬ cription of chicken-pox, we may observe, that the diagnosis between that disease and sniall-poX is by no means so easy as Mr B. has chosen to represent it. Much praise has been given to the simplificaton of nosology in modern times; but, on many occasions, w7£ are afraid it is carried farther than observation warrants. Were we to admit no case to be small-pox, except those which accorded exactly with the definitions of it in systematic writers, we should reject not only, as we certainly do, Mr Brown’s cases of pimples of two or.threedays stand, ing, of rash, of sickness without any eruption, and of sneezing, but every case in which the eruptions did not subsist seven or eight days, and maturate completely ; and, on the other handsome kinds of chick¬ en-pox, so far from always resembling little blisters, and bursting in twenty-four hours, as represented by Mr Brown, even he must have known, from the Vtxy description of Dr Willan, which he has pre¬ tended to quote, subsist for several days, become purulent, and leave a pit behind them. We must quote the passage, to contrast it with Mr Brown’s edition of it. ”On the third day, the vesicles are shrivelled • those which have been broken exhibit ac the top slight gummy scabs* formed by concretion of the exuding lymph. Some oftthe shrivelled vesicles which remain entire, but have much inflammation round them contain, on thisday, purulent fluid. Every vesicleof this kind leaves, aii Ci scabbing, a durable cicatrix or piti” When to this we add, toa*, mm st cases cf chicken-pox, successive crops of eruption take piace for several days, it is evident how little we can trust to Mr B.’s diagnosis, who will allow no eruption to be chicken-pox which sub- skt;» longer than twenty-four hours, and who have will every thing to be small-pox which is not this ephemeral chicken-pox. In his fourth case, for example,” no eruption made its appearance, although there was a rash for about twenty-four hours.” In the fourteenth, a rash made its appearance, followed with a few pustules, which kept out three or four days ; and, in the seventeenth, there was a rash, but no eruption. Such are, in Mr B.’ opinion, decided cases of natural small-pox 1 Mr Brown,s cases, admitting some of them to be accurately stated, at the utmost only prove, that cases of small-pox have occurred after apparently perfect vaccination ; an admission publicly made by the