Cowpox

“ In 1788 he showed a drawing of the cowpox as it occurred in milkers to Sir Everard Home and others in London. Various eminent medical men, Cline, Adams, Haygarth, heard of and discussed the matter, and encouraged Jenner’s inquiries. But it was not till May 14, 1796, that he had an opportunity of transferring cowpox from one human being to another. Sarah Nelmes, a dairymaid who had been infected from her master’s cows, afforded the matter, and it was inserted by two surperficial incisions into the arms of James Phipps, a healthy boy about eight years old. ”

“ During the investigation of the casual cowpox, I was struck with the idea that it might be practicable to propagate the disease by inoculation, after the manner of the smallpox, first from the cow, and finally from one human being to another. ”

“ Cowpox, or vaccinia, though infectious for cows, is not transmissible among human beings, in other words, as a disease of man it is not infectious. Edward Jenner, the Englishman of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, was the first person to think scientifically on the fact that cowpox protected from smallpox. John Hunter had said to him, "Jenner, don't think, try." Luckily, however, he did both. Thinking alone avails little, experimentation alone avails not much, but the one along with the other has removed mountains. ”

“ As early as 1775 he began to associate the disease called cowpox with that of smallpox, and gradually the idea of inoculation against this terrible scourge, which killed or disfigured hundreds of thousands every year in England alone, was worked out and applied. He believed that if the two diseases were similar, a person inoculated with the mild disease (cowpox) would after a slight attack of this disease be immune against the more deadly and loathsome smallpox. It was not until 1796 that he was able to prove his theory, as at first few people would submit to vaccination. ”

“ Gregory in 1825 was enabled to separate the sheep from the goats by the dividing line of cowpox, the former dying at the rate of 8 per cent., the latter at the rate of 41 per cent. There are various ways of apportioning a general average. The presence or absence of cowpox scars is one principle, which could not have been used to break up the 25 per cent of 1777, or the 39 per cent, of 1781, or the 33 per cent. of 1796, into two component parts. One thing common to all times is the different rate of fatality at different ages. All the deaths in the 8 per cent. ”

“ It was while the ravages of smallpox were being felt and deplored over the whole country, that Jenner was quietly investigating and experimenting in his native village; and gradually little facts and incidents relating to cowpox were collected, until in his own mind an opinion was firmly rooted that this disease communicated by the cow was a safeguard against smallpox. About the time when he had formed this opinion, an accidental case of cowpox occurred in his neighbourhood, and he caused drawings of the pustules to be made, and took them with him to London. ”

“ Neither do they seem to be aware of the fact that experience now indicates that Foot and Mouth disease may be ultimately proved to be only a virulent form of “Cowpox” or a mongrel form of Smallpox to which ordinary Cowpox or “Vaccinia” may degenerate at any time like a mild domestic dog suddenly changing, in an attack of Rabies, to a mad, dangerous, and deadly distributor of disease. ”

“ WHAT VACCINATION REALLY IS AND HOW PUS INFECTION, LOCKJAW, AND OTHER DISEASES WORK TOGETHER IN VACCINATION WITH FATAL EFFECTS Every act of cowpox vaccination consists simply in making a wound, scratch or puncture on the human body and then rubbing or injecting into this wound a living or virulent disease virus of a more or less complex nature, usually containing the actual virus of human smallpox combined with animal cowpox and always the virus of pus infection or septicemia in one or more of its many forms. ”

“ And an attack of cowpox protects from smallpox. To test these things experimentally some one must first be inoculated with cowpox, and, having recovered from the vaccinia, that same person must, secondly, be inoculated with the virus of smallpox or be exposed to the infection, and, thirdly, this person ought not to take the disease. ”

“ Ceely, a correct observer in the Vale of Aylesbury, uses no exaggerated phrase when he speaks of “the merciless [Pg 562] manipulations of the milkers.” Men milkers are well known to lack the delicate tact of women; and cowpox has been most common in the great dairying districts where men-milkers are employed. But in some animals cowpox may be produced even under gentler handling or with slighter provocation, of which I give a recent case from my notebook, taken during a visit to the country:
27 April, 1891. ”

“ That this disease when communicated to man is a sure protection from smallpox; (2) that the cowpox alone, and not other eruptions affecting the cow, which might be confounded with it, has this power of protection; (3) that the cowpox may be communicated at will from the cow to man by the hand of the surgeon; and (4) that the cowpox once ingrafted on the human subject may be transferred from person to person, giving each one the same immunity from smallpox as was enjoyed by the person infected directly from the cow. ”

“ Jenner’s colleagues are reported to have denied that cowpoxed milkers escaped natural smallpox any more than their fellows [1071] . About the year 1794 Jenner began to press the subject upon the attention of his friends. His clerical neighbour, Worthington, mentioned it in one of his letters to Haygarth, of Chester, who replied, on 15 April, 1794:
“Your account of the cowpox is indeed very marvellous, being so strange a history, and so contradictory to all past observations on this subject, very clear and full evidence will be required to render it credible. ”

“ Woodville, eager to rank among the vaccinators, discovered cowpox in a dairy in Gray’s Inn Lane, in January 1799, found that the milkers became infected, and took from them matter with which he vaccinated a number of persons; but contrary to Jenner’s practice, he proceeded to insert smallpox matter in their arms on the third and fifth days after vaccination, as if that could afford a fair trial of the new method. No wonder that the patients exhibited pustules like those of smallpox, and this was the first of the many disasters that arose from the injudicious zeal of Jenner’s first followers. ”

“ Someone threw out the suggestion that the cow suffered from scarlet fever, the sign of it being soreness of the paps. Without taking seriously so random a hypothesis as that, we find much agreement as to the fact that the cows, to which the contaminated milk has been traced, were affected, one or more of them, with sore paps. In some cases the disease of the teats had been admitted to be the same as cowpox; in other cases that has been denied; in a third variety, a cow has had cowpox on one teat and something else on another. ”

“ Before the end of the 18th century, the danger to beauty from an attack of smallpox had become a matter chiefly of historical interest, carrying the mind back to the Restoration or the early Georgian era. The richer classes, while they seem to have countenanced cowpox inoculation as a good thing in general, were probably apathetic on their own account. ”

“ Cowpox, though raised on the lips of the vulva, the inner side of the thighs and the abdomen where it can be easily reached by the tail does not tend to implicate the genital canal, and it so quickly secures immunity, that neither male nor female would be likely to long convey the disease. Yet in both horses and cattle experience shows that the acquired immunity of vesicular exanthema is very short lived.
Cattle, much more than horses, are liable to transmission of the disease by other channels than coition. ”

“ By the mercurial suppression of syphilis and by means of vaccination you are perpetuating smallpox.
What has syphilis to do with smallpox? They are very closely related, and similar in appearance, symtomatology and in their effects upon the organism.
A German physician, Dr. Cruwell, who studied the subject thoroughly, says: "Every vaccination with so-called cowpox virus means syphilitic infection. Cowpox is not a disease peculiar to cattle; it is always due to syphilitic or smallpox infection from the diseased hands of human beings. ”

“ Just as Newton thought scientifically about that falling apple and reduced our conceptions of the universe to order, just as Watt thought scientifically about that kettle-lid lifted by the steam and so introduced the modern era of mechanical power brought under man's control, so Jenner thought about and experimented with cowpox until he had satisfied himself that he had discovered something which would rid the human race forever of the incubus of an intolerable pestilence. ”

“ Strange to say, in Asia also, in the province of Lus, the milkers have a disease long known as Photo-Shooter, contracted from milking the camel in the same way as cowpox is contracted from milking the cow, and it is found to be equally protective against the smallpox. ”

“ Cowpox pustules have been found only on the udders of milk cows which came in contact with human hands. Cattle roaming in pasture and prairie have never been affected by cowpox, nor have domesticated steers and oxen. ”

“ Others in England, France, America and India, have succeeded in raising a smallpox pustule at the point of puncture in the epidermis of the cow or in the more delicate transitional epithelium, the matter from which has produced smallpox in its turn [1081] . But these are academic exercises. The natural cowpox of the cow has been likened by none to the natural smallpox of man in a sustained comparison of all the anatomical and epidemiological particulars of each ”

“ He repeatedly mentioned the subject of cowpox to his great teacher, John Hunter, when studying with him in London. Hunter never damped the ardour of a pupil by suggesting doubts or difficulties; but it does not appear that he was specially impressed by what he heard. Yet he made known Jenner’s information and opinions both in his lectures and to his friends. But for many years Jenner’s ideas were poohpoohed by medical and other authorities whom he met in his country practice. ”

“ I said. "It would have saved exposing our men to that sort of danger."
"One of his ideas is to give volunteers serum from recovered cases and then let them get the measlepox."
"You mean like giving children gamma globulin shots after they've been exposed to measles so they'll get just a mild case of the disease and be protected for life?" Pat asked.
"That's the general idea," the Chief said. "Then, too, he might want to look at the animal population in the area. There's a theory that cowpox was originally smallpox that got into cattle. ”

“ Inoculated persons were therefore a danger to the community; and there is no doubt that such persons had occasionally introduced smallpox into towns which had been free from the natural disease. At the end of the eighteenth century, just about the time of Jenner's discovery, public opinion was strongly against the continuance of the practice of inoculation, and as natural smallpox had not at all abated its epidemic character, the times were ripe for "some new thing."
Now there is a disease of cows know as cowpox or vaccinia (from the Latin vacca, a cow) which is communicable to human beings. ”

“ Galileo was opposed, Bruno was opposed, Copernicus was opposed, Harvey was opposed, George Stevenson was opposed, Pasteur was ridiculed and opposed, and so were Darwin, Simpson and even Lister. The physiological inertia even of the educated has too often blocked the path of advancement: but Jenner is in illustrious company, a prince amongst the hierarchy of the misunderstood.
The facts or surmises before Jenner at this date, then, were— (a) Cowpox produces an eruption extremely like that of mild smallpox, it is, therefore, probably a form of smallpox modified by transmission through the cow ”

“ Single cases of certain infectious diseases may appear in a community year after year, and at intervals the cases become so numerous that the disease is said to be epidemic. Such a disease is smallpox. This is a highly infectious disease, towards which all mankind is susceptible. Complete protection against the disease can be conferred by Jenner's discovery of vaccination. The disease becomes modified when transferred to cattle, producing what is known as cowpox, in which vesicles similar to those of smallpox appear on the skin. ”

“ Jenner to have been a very wonderful woman, quite as deeply interested as the doctor himself in securing the great benefit to humanity that would result from the demonstration that cowpox protected against smallpox, but it is a little bit difficult for us in these days to understand how her mother-heart could have permitted some of the experiments which Dr. ”

“ There is one in particular called the cowk cowk; it is the most disgusting looking animal that creeps the ground, and its bite is mortal. It is about a foot and a half long, and seems a production between the toad and lizard. At stated periods it makes a noise exactly like a cuckoo clock. Even the natives fly from it with the utmost horror. The alligators are daring and numerous. ”

“ If you separate the feathers on Kookooskoos' head, you will find an enormous ear-opening running from above his eye halfway round his face. And the ear within is so marvelously sensitive that it can hear the rustle of a rat in the grass, or the scrape of a sparrow's toes on a branch fifty feet away. So he sits on his watch tower, so still that he is never noticed, and as twilight comes on, when he can see best, he hoots suddenly and listens. The sound has a muffled quality which makes it hard to locate, and it frightens every bird and small animal within hearing ”