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Cline, who in July last was so obliging at my request as to try the efficacy of the cow-pox virus, was kind enough to give me a letter on the result of it, from which the following is an extract: "My DEAR SIR: "The cow-pox experiment has succeeded admirably. The child sickened on the seventh day, and the fever, which was moderate, subsided on the eleventh.
CASE XVII. The more accurately to observe the progress of the infection I selected a healthy boy, about eight years old, for the purpose of inoculation for the cow-pox. On the seventh day he complained of uneasiness in the axilla, and on the ninth he became a little chilly, lost his appetite, and had a slight headache.
After the many fruitless attempts to give the smallpox to those who had had the cow-pox, it did not appear necessary, nor was it convenient to me, to inoculate the whole of those who had been the subjects of these late trials; yet I thought it right to see the effects of variolous matter on some of them, particularly William Summers, the first of these patients who had been infected with matter taken from the cow.
Two days afterwards I was desired to inoculate a woman and four children with the cow-pox, and I inadvertently took the vaccine matter on the same lancet which was before charged with that of smallpox.
Previously to the appearance of the distemper among the cows there was no fresh cow brought into the farm, nor any servant employed who was affected with the cow-pox. In April, 1795, a general inoculation taking place here, Merret was inoculated with his family; so that a period of twenty-five years had elapsed from his having the cow-pox to this time.
Fewster, Surgeon, of Thornbury, in this county, a gentleman perfectly well acquainted with the appearances of the cow-pox on the human subject: "William Morris, aged thirty-two, servant to Mr. Cox of Almondsbury, in this county, applied to me the 2d of April, 1798.
He also made quite extensive investigations as to the geological formations and fossils found in his neighborhood. Even during his student days with Hunter he had been much interested in the belief, current in the rural districts of Gloucestershire, of the antagonism between cow-pox and small-pox, a person having suffered from cow-pox being immuned to small-pox.
That the disease produced upon the cows by the colt and from thence conveyed to those who milked them was the TRUE and not the SPURIOUS cow-pox, there can be scarcely any room for suspicion; yet it would have been more completely satisfactory had the effects of variolous matter been ascertained on the farmer's wife, but there was a peculiarity in her situation which prevented my making the experiment.
The cow-pox, it seems, from the doctor's information, was communicated to the farmer from his cows at the time that they gave out an offensive stench from their udders. Some other instances have likewise been represented to me of the appearance of the disease, apparently marked with its characteristic symptoms, and yet that the patients have afterwards had the smallpox.
A very small pinch of the fresh shoot is pleasant to taste; these shoots, eaten constantly, were once considered to cure chest disease, and to this day science endeavours by various forms of inhalations from fir products to check that malady. Common rural experience, as with the cow-pox, has often laid the basis of medical treatment.
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