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This is a phenomenon observed in many other vaccines as well as in cow-pox.
Certain virus which are employed for experimental purposes are found after one or two
removes to lose their effect altogether in the case of animals in which the disease does
not occur naturally. For example, rabies, which is produced in the most virulent form in
the rabbit, if transmitted to the ape will after three or four removes completely die out and
fail to produce the disease in this latter animal ; but if re-transmitted back to the rabbit
before it has actually reached vanishing point, will gradually resume its former virulence.
The third and last method which I shall notice is the inoculation of cattle with
human small-pox. The production of this disease in the cow is sometimes difficult,
although if care be taken in selecting the animal it can generally be successfully accom-
plished. Many experiments have been made, and the result is that when successful the
cows show the symptoms of cow-pox, and the lymph taken from them produces genuine
vaccine vesicles in the human being. This has been the method by which cow-pox as now
seen in England and on the Continent has been principally started.
The pioneers in this movement were Dr. Thile of Kasan, Dr. Ceely of Aylesburg,
and Dr. Badcock of Brighton, and thousands of children have been vaccinated from the
stock of lymph raised in this manner on many occasions. It has been supplied to hundreds
of practitioners, and is without doubt the method that should invariably be resorted to if
at any time genuine and efficient lymph be required. It would surprise many medical
practitioners in England if they were told that they were doing wrong in using such
lymph, or that they were likely to give their patients small-pox. Such a suggestion would
meet with scant consideration at their hands.
The best method of inoculating in this way is to select a young animal, free from
all disease, with as fair a skin as possible, and, after making a series of punctures, to leave
a number of points charged with variolous matter in them. About the fifth or sixth day
distinct papules will be observed, and on the seventh to the ninth day they will generally
have the appearance of true vaccine vesicles and be found to contain small quantities of
lymph, which if taken and employed on the human subject will produce exactly the same
symptoms as the ordinary cow lymph, but with the symptomatic fever more severe not
the slightest appearance of small-pox can be seen, and statements to this effect are
founded on ignorance of the actual facts and want of observation.
In passing through the body of the cow small-pox is modified, just as many other
diseases are now found to become when passed through the bodies of animals in whom
they do not occur as natural complaints, the virus of small-pox thus undergoing such
modification and attenuation as to deprive it of all danger, and it can be used with the
most perfect safety and success, affording protection of the most efficient kind to those in
whom this method of vaccination is practised.
Transmission of the lymph from the cow in the first instances very frequently
induces constitutional symptoms of a severe kind, but in succeeding removes the severity
of the local symptoms diminish greatly, and so soon as the lymph becomes humanized the
ordinary symptoms of vaccination are preseut.
I have so far briefly mentioned the methods chiefly used for raising lymph for
ordinary vaccination, and before proceeding to consider the system now employed in
Germany to avoid accidents and to produce lymph of the purest kind, it may be well to
consider the objections which the natives of India raise against the present custom of
vaccinating from arm-to-arm or from calves obtained from zamíndárs ; and in doing this, I
shall confine myself as closely as possible to the matter from the natives point of view as
ascertained from inquiry and personal experience.
With regard to arm-to-arm vaccination, they complain that they are at times
compelled to take their children about from place to place; that the children are thereby
unnecessarily exposed and fatigued ; that the lymph taken from the arm if it falls upon
an abraded portion of the skin elsewhere produces sores, and in some cases the original
vesicles are turned into bad ulcers and the whole arm is inflamed, severe fever and
illness often following, sometimes causing the death of the child.
Secondly, as a rule, the children of low caste parents are those mostly used as
vaccinifers, and the better classes strongly object to their children being done from such
persons both on religious grounds and because such people and their children are dirty,
and very often diseased.
Thirdly, the people will often remark that in thus vaccinating you are introducing
the blood of one child into that of another, and therefore are likely to produce disease
of whatever nature the vaccinifer may be suffering from.
With regard to animal vaccination, it may be said that there are very few who
object to the lymph from the baffalo from religious scruples ; but at times fanaticism will
produce an outcry, such as occurred in Pesháawar in 1890, when buffalo vaccination was
first
introduced into that city. This objection was made both by Hindúus and
Muhammadans, the latter saying that the English wished first to take away the religion of
the Hindúus by cow vaccination, and then intended, to do the same to the Muhammadans
by vaccination from swine.