The Harvard Classics Part 17

The following observations were obligingly sent me by Mr. Tierny, a.s.sistant Surgeon to the South Gloucester Regiment of Militia, to whom I am indebted for a former report on this subject:

"I inoculated with the cow-pox matter from the eleventh to the latter part of April, twenty-five persons, including women and children. Some on the eleventh were inoculated with the matter Mr. Shrapnell (surgeon to the regiment) had from you, the others with matter taken from these. The progress of the puncture was accurately observed, and its appearance seemed to differ from the smallpox in having less inflammation around its basis on the first days--that is, from the third to the seventh; but after this the inflammation increased, extending on the tenth or eleventh day to a circle of an inch and a half from its centre, and threatening very sore arms; but this I am happy to say was not the case; for, by applying mercurial ointment to the inflamed part, which was repeated daily until the inflammation went off, the arm got well without any further application or trouble. The const.i.tutional symptoms which appeared on the eighth or ninth day after inoculation scarcely deserved the name of disease, as they were so slight as to be scarcely perceptible, except that I could connect a slight headache and languor, with a stiffness and rather painful sensation in the axilla. This latter symptom was the most striking--it remained from twelve to forty-eight hours.

In no case did I observe the smallest pustule, or even discolouration of the skin, like an incipient pustule, except about the part where the virus has been applied.

"After all these symptoms had subsided and the arms were well, I inoculated four of this number with variolous matter, taken from a patient in another regiment. In each of these it was inserted several times under the cuticle, producing slight inflammation on the second or third day, and always disappearing before the fifth or sixth, except in one who had the cow-pox in Gloucestershire before he joined us, and who also received it at this time by inoculation. In this man the puncture inflamed and his arm was much sorer than from the insertion of the cow-pox virus; but there was no pain in the axilla, nor could any const.i.tutional affection be observed.

"I have only to add that I am now fully satisfied of the efficacy of the cow-pox in preventing the appearance of the smallpox, and that it is a most happy and salutary subst.i.tute for it. I remain, etc.,

"M. J. TIERNY."

Although the susceptibility of the virus of the cow-pox is, for the most part, lost in those who have had the smallpox, yet in some const.i.tutions it is only partially destroyed, and in others it does not appear to be in the least diminished.

By far the greater number on whom trials were made resisted it entirely; yet I found some on whose arm the pustule from inoculation was formed completely, but without producing the common efflorescent blush around it, or any const.i.tutional illness, while others have had the disease in the most perfect manner. A case of the latter kind having been presented to me by Mr. Fewster, Surgeon, of Thornbury, I shall insert it:

"Three children were inoculated with the vaccine matter you obligingly sent me. On calling to look at their arms three days after I was told that John Hodges, one of the three, had been inoculated with the smallpox when a year old, and that he had a full burthen, of which his face produced plentiful marks, a circ.u.mstance I was not before made acquainted with. On the sixth day the arm of the boy appeared as if inoculated with variolous matter, but the pustule was rather more elevated. On the ninth day he complained of violent pain in his head and back, accompanied with vomiting and much fever. The next day he was very well and went to work as usual. The punctured part began to spread, and there was the areola around the inoculated part to a considerable extent.

"As this is contrary to an a.s.sertion made in the Medical and Physical Journal, No. 8, I thought it right to give you this information, and remain, "Dear sir, etc., "J. FEWSTER."

It appears, then, that the animal economy with regard to the action of this virus is under the same laws as it is with respect to the variolous virus, after previously feeling its influence, as far as comparisons can be made between the two diseases.

Some striking instances of the power of the cow-pox in suspending the progress of the smallpox after the patients had been several days casually exposed to the infection have been laid before me by Mr. Lyford, Surgeon, of Winchester, and my nephew, the Rev. G.

C Jenner. Mr. Lyford, after giving an account of his extensive and successful practice in the vaccine inoculation in Hampshire, writes as follows:

"The following case occurred to me a short time since, and may probably be worth your notice. I was sent for to a patient with the smallpox, and on inquiry found that five days previous to my seeing him the eruption began to appear. During the whole of this time two children who had not had the smallpox, were constantly in the room with their father, and frequently on the bed with him. The mother consulted me on the propriety of inoculating them, but objected to my taking the matter from their father, as he was subject to erysipelas. I advised her by all means to have them inoculated at that time, as I could not procure any variolous matter elsewhere. However, they were inoculated with vaccine matter, but I cannot say I flattered myself with its proving successful, as they had previously been so long and still continued to be exposed to the variolous infection.

Notwithstanding this I was agreeably surprised to find the vaccine disease advance and go through its regular course; and, if I may be allowed the expression, to the total extinction of the smallpox."

Mr. Jenner's cases were not less satisfactory. He writes as follows:

"A son of Thomas Stinchcomb, of Woodford, near Berkeley, was infected with the natural smallpox at Bristol, and came home to his father's cottage. Four days after the eruptions had appeared upon the boy, the family (none of which had ever had the smallpox), consisting of the father, mother, and five children, was inoculated with vaccine virus. On the arm of the mother it failed to produce the least effect, and she, of course, had the smallpox, [Footnote: Under similar circ.u.mstances I think it would be advisable to insert the matter into each arm, which would be more likely to insure the success of the operation.--E. J.] but the rest of the family had the cow-pox in the usual way, and were not affected with the smallpox, although they were in the same room, and the children slept in the same bed with their brother who was confined to it with the natural smallpox; and subsequently with their mother.

"I attended this family with my brother, Mr. H. Jenner."

The following cases are of too singular a nature to remain unnoticed.

Miss R--, a young lady about five years old, was seized on the evening of the eighth day after inoculation with vaccine virus, with such symptoms as commonly denote the accession of violent fever. Her throat was also a little sore, and there were some uneasy sensations about the muscles of the neck. The day following a rash was perceptible on her face and neck, so much resembling the efflorescence of the scarlatina anginosa that I was induced to ask whether Miss R--had been exposed to the contagion of that disease. An answer in the affirmative, and the rapid spreading of the redness over the skin, at once relieved me from much anxiety respecting the nature of the malady, which went through its course in the ordinary way, but not without symptoms which were alarming both to myself and Mr. Lyford, who attended with me. There was no apparent deviation in the ordinary progress of the pustule to a state of maturity from what we see in general; yet there was a total suspension of the areola or florid discolouration around it, until the scarlatina had retired from the const.i.tution. As soon as the patient was freed from this disease this appearance advanced in the usual way. [Footnote: I witnessed a similar fact in a case of measles. The pustule from the cow-pock virus advanced to maturity, while the measles existed in the const.i.tution, but no EFFLORESCENCE appeared around it until the measles had ceased to exert its influence.]

The case of Miss H--R--is not less interesting than that of her sister, above related. She was exposed to the contagion of the scarlatina at the same time, and sickened almost at the same hour. The symptoms continued severe about twelve hours, when the scarlatina-rash shewed itself faintly upon her face, and partly upon her neck. After remaining two or three hours it suddenly disappeared, and she became perfectly free from every complaint.

My surprise at this sudden transition from extreme sickness to health in great measure ceased when I observed that the inoculated pustule had occasioned, in this case, the common efflorescent appearance around it, and that as it approached the centre it was nearly in an erysipelatous state. But the most remarkable part of this history is that, on the fourth day afterwards, so soon as the efflorescence began to die away upon the arm and the pustule to dry up, the scarlatina again appeared, her throat became sore, the rash spread all over her. She went fairly through the disease with its common symptoms.

That these were actually cases of scarlatina was rendered certain by two servants in the family falling ill at the same time with the distemper, who had been exposed to the infection with the young ladies.

Some there are who suppose the security from the smallpox obtained through the cow-pox will be of a temporary nature only.

This supposition is refuted not only by a.n.a.logy with respect to the habits of diseases of a similar nature, but by incontrovertible facts, which appear in great numbers against it.

To those already adduced in the former part of my first treatise [Footnote: See pages 217, 218, 219, 221, 223, etc.] many more might be adduced were it deemed necessary; but among the cases I refer to, one will be found of a person who had the cow-pox fifty-three years before the effect of the smallpox was tried upon him. As he completely resisted it, the intervening period I conceive must necessarily satisfy any reasonable mind. Should further evidence be thought necessary, I shall observe that, among the cases presented to me by Mr. Fry, Mr. Darke, Mr.

Tierny, Mr. H. Jenner, and others, there were many whom they inoculated ineffectually with variolous matter, who had gone through the cow-pox many years before this trial was made.

It has been imagined that the cow-pox is capable of being communicated from one person to another by effluvia without the intervention of inoculation. My experiments, made with the design of ascertaining this important point, all tend to establish my original position, that it is not infectious except by contact, I have never hesitated to suffer those on whose arms there were pustules exhaling the effluvia from a.s.sociating or even sleeping with others who never had experienced either the cow-pox or the smallpox. And, further, I have repeatedly, among children, caused the uninfected to breathe over the inoculated vaccine 'pustules during their whole progress, yet these experiments were tried without the least effect. However, to submit a matter so important to a still further scrutiny, I desired Mr. H. Jenner to make any further experiments which might strike him as most likely to establish or refute what had been advanced on this subject. He has since informed me "that he inoculated children at the breast, whose mothers had not gone through either the smallpox or the cow-pox; that he had inoculated mothers whose sucking infants had never undergone either of these diseases; that the effluvia from the inoculated pustules, in either case, had been inhaled from day to day during the whole progress of their maturation, and that there was not the least perceptible effect from these exposures." One woman he inoculated about a week previous to her accouchement, that her infant might be the more fully and conveniently exposed to the pustule; but, as in the former instances, no infection was given, although the child frequently slept on the arm of its mother with its nostrils and mouth exposed to the pustule in the fullest state of maturity. In a word, is it not impossible for the cow-pox, whose ONLY manifestation appears to consist in the pustules CREATED BY CONTACT, to produce ITSELF by effluvia?

In the course of a late inoculation I observed an appearance which it may be proper here to relate. The punctured part on a boy's arm (who was inoculated with fresh limpid virus) on the sixth day, instead of shewing a beginning vesicle, which is usual in the cow-pox at that period, was encrusted over with a rugged, amber-coloured scab. The scab continued to spread and increase in thickness for some days, when, at its edges, a vesicated ring appeared, and the disease went through its ordinary course, the boy having had soreness in the axilla and some slight indisposition. With the fluid matter taken from his arm five persons were inoculated. In one it took no effect. In another it produced a perfect pustule without any deviation from the common appearance; but in the other three the progress of the inflammation was exactly similar to the instance which afforded the virus for their inoculation; there was a creeping scab of a loose texture, and subsequently the formation of limpid fluid at its edges. As these people were all employed in laborious exercises, it is possible that these anomalous appearances might owe their origin to the friction of the clothes on the newly inflamed part of the arm. I have not yet had an opportunity of exposing them to the smallpox.

In the early part of this inquiry I felt far more anxious respecting the inflammation of the inoculated arm than at present; yet that this affection will go on to a greater extent than could be wished is a circ.u.mstance sometimes to be expected.

As this can be checked, or even entirely subdued, by very simple means, I see no reason why the patient should feel an uneasy hour because an application may not be absolutely necessary. About the tenth or eleventh day, if the pustule has proceeded regularly, the appearance of the arm will almost to a certainty indicate whether this is to be expected or not. Should it happen, nothing more need be done than to apply a single drop of the aqua lythargyri acetati [Footnote: Extract of Saturn.] upon the pustule, and, having suffered it to remain two or three minutes, to cover the efflorescence surrounding the pustule with a piece of linen dipped in the aqua lythargyri compos. [Footnote: Goulard water. For further information on this subject see the first Treatise on the Var. Vac., Dr. Marshall's letters, etc.] The former may be repeated twice or thrice during the day, the latter as often as it may feel agreeable to the patient.

When the scab is prematurely rubbed off (a circ.u.mstance not unfrequent among children and working people), the application of a little aqua lythargyri acet. to the part immediately coagulates the surface, which supplies its place, and prevents a sore.

In my former treatises on this subject I have remarked that the human const.i.tution frequently retains its susceptibility to the smallpox contagion (both from effluvia and contact) after previously feeling its influence. In further corroboration of this declaration many facts have been communicated to me by various correspondents. I shall select one of them.

"DEAR SIR:

"Society at large must, I think, feel much indebted to you for your Inquiries and Observations on the Nature and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, etc., etc. As I conceive what I am now about to communicate to be of some importance, I imagine it cannot be uninteresting to you, especially as it will serve to corroborate your a.s.sertion of the susceptibility of the human system of the variolous contagion, although it has previously been made sensible of its action. In November, 1793, I was desired to inoculate a person with the smallpox. I took the variolous matter from a child under the disease in the natural way, who had a large burthen of distinct pustules. The mother of the child being desirous of seeing my method of communicating the disease by inoculation, after having opened a pustule, I introduced the point of my lancet in the usual way on the back part of my own hand, and thought no more of it until I felt a sensation in the part which reminded me of the transaction. This happened upon the third day; on the fourth there were all the appearances common to inoculation, at which I was not at all surprised, nor did I feel myself uneasy upon perceiving the inflammation continue to increase to the sixth and seventh day, accompanied with a very small quant.i.ty of fluid, repeated experiments having taught me it might happen so with persons who had undergone the disease, and yet would escape any const.i.tutional affection; but I was not so fortunate; for on the eighth day I was seized with all the symptoms of the eruptive fever, but in a much more violent degree than when I was before inoculated, which was about eighteen years previous to this, when I had a considerable number of pustules. I must confess I was now greatly alarmed, although I had been much engaged in the smallpox, having at different times inoculated not less than two thousand persons. I was convinced my present indisposition proceeded from the insertion of the variolous matter, and, therefore, anxiously looked for an eruption. On the tenth day I felt a very unpleasant sensation of stillness and heat on each side of my face near my ear, and the fever began to decline. The affection in my face soon terminated in three or four pustules attended with inflammation, but which did not maturate, and I was presently well.

"I remain, dear sir, etc., "THOMAS MILES."

This inquiry is not now so much in its infancy as to restrain me from speaking more positively than formerly on the important point of scrophula as connected with the smallpox.

Every pract.i.tioner in medicine who has extensively inoculated with the smallpox, or has attended many of those who have had the distemper in the natural way, must acknowledge that he has frequently seen scrophulous affections, in some form or another, sometimes rather quickly shewing themselves after the recovery of the patients. Conceiving this fact to be admitted, as I presume it must be by all who have carefully attended to the subject, may I not ask whether it does not appear probable that the general introduction of the smallpox into Europe has not been among the most conductive means in exciting that formidable foe to health?

Having attentively watched the effects of the cow-pox in this respect, I am happy in being able to declare that the disease does not appear to have the least tendency to produce this destructive malady.

The scepticism that appeared, even among the most enlightened of medical men when my sentiments on the important subject of the cow-pox were first promulgated, was highly laudable. To have admitted the truth of a doctrine, at once so novel and so unlike any thing that ever had appeared in the annals of medicine, without the test of the most rigid scrutiny, would have bordered upon temerity; but now, when that scrutiny has taken place, not only among ourselves, but in the first professional circles in Europe, and when it has been uniformly found in such abundant instances that the human frame, when once it has felt the influence of the genuine cow-pox in the way that has been described, is never afterwards at any period of its existence a.s.sailable by the smallpox, may I not with perfect confidence congratulate my country and society at large on their beholding, in the mild form of the cow-pox, an antidote that is capable of extirpating from the earth a disease which is every hour devouring its victims; a disease that has ever been considered as the severest scourge of the human race!

THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, August 29, 1809, and educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, and Harvard College. After graduation, he entered the Law School, but soon gave up law for medicine. He studied first in Boston, and later spent two years in medical schools in Europe, mainly in Paris. On his return he began to practise in Boston, but in two years he was appointed professor of anatomy at Dartmouth College, a position which he held from 1838 to 1840, when he again took up his Boston practise. It was soon after this, in 1843, that he published his essay on the "Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever,"

his only contribution of high distinction to medical science.

From 1847 to 1882 he was Parkman professor of anatomy and physiology in the Harvard Medical School. He died in Boston, October 7, 1894.

In spite of the importance of the paper here printed, Holmes's reputation as a scientist was overshadowed by that won by him as a wit and a man of letters. When he was only twenty-one his "Old Ironsides" brought him into notice; and through his poetry and fiction, and the sparkling talk of the "Breakfast Table" series, he took a high place among the most distinguished group of writers that America has yet produced.

THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER

Note.--This essay appeared first in 1843, in The New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine, and was reprinted in the "Medical Essays" in 1855.

In collecting, enforcing and adding to the evidence acc.u.mulated upon this most serious subject, I would not be understood to imply that there exists a doubt in the mind of any well-informed member of the medical profession as to the fact that puerperal fever is sometimes communicated from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence, or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a case of "oblique vision"; I should be unwilling to force home the argumentum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent to make a question of a momentous fact which is no longer to be considered as a subject for trivial discussions, but to be acted upon with silent prompt.i.tude. It signifies nothing that wise and experienced pract.i.tioners have sometimes doubted the reality of the danger in question; no man has the right to doubt it any longer. No negative facts, no opposing opinions, be they what they may, or whose they may, can form any answer to the series of cases now within the reach of all who choose to explore the records of medical science.

If there are some who conceive that any important end would be answered by recording such opinions, or by collecting the history of all the cases they could find in which no evidence of the influence of contagion existed, I believe they are in error.

Suppose a few writers of authority can be found to profess a disbelief in contagion,--and they are very few compared with those who think differently,--is it quite clear that they formed their opinions on a view of all the facts, or is it not apparent that they relied mostly on their own solitary experience? Still further, of those whose names are quoted, is it not true that scarcely a single one could, by any possibility, have known the half or the tenth of the facts bearing on the subject which have reached such a frightful amount within the last few years? Again, as to the utility of negative facts, as we may briefly call them,--instances, namely, in which exposure has not been followed by disease,--although, like other truths, they may be worth knowing, I do not see that they are like to shed any important light upon the subject before us. Every such instance requires a good deal of circ.u.mstantial explanation before it can be accepted. It is not enough that a pract.i.tioner should have had a single case of puerperal fever not followed by others. It must be known whether he attended others while this case was in progress, whether he went directly from one chamber to others, whether he took any, and what, precautions. It is important to know that several women were exposed to infection derived from the patient, so that allowance may be made for want of predisposition. Now, if of negative facts so sifted there could be acc.u.mulated a hundred for every one plain instance of communication here recorded, I trust it need not be said that we are bound to guard and watch over the hundredth tenant of our fold, though the ninety and nine may be sure of escaping the wolf at its entrance. If any one is disposed, then, to take a hundred instances of lives, endangered or sacrificed out of those I have mentioned, and make it reasonably clear that within a similar time and compa.s.s TEN THOUSAND escaped the same exposure, I shall, thank him for his industry, but I must be permitted to hold to my own practical conclusions, and beg him to adopt or at least to examine them also. Children that walk in calico before open fires are not always burned to death; the instances to the contrary may be worth recording; but by no means if they are to be used as arguments against woollen frocks and high fenders.

I am not sure that this paper will escape another remark which it might be wished were founded in justice. It may be said that the facts are too generally known and acknowledged to require any formal argument or exposition, that there is nothing new in the positions advanced, and no need of laying additional statements before the profession. But on turning to two works, one almost universally, and the other extensively, appealed to as authority in this country, I see ample reason to overlook this objection.

In the last edition of Dewees's Treatise on the "Diseases of Females" it is expressly said, "In this country, under no circ.u.mstance that puerperal fever has appeared hitherto, does it afford the slightest ground for the belief that it is contagious." In the "Philadelphia Practice of Midwifery" not one word can be found in the chapter devoted to this disease which would lead the reader to suspect that the idea of contagion had ever been entertained. It seems proper, therefore, to remind those who are in the habit of referring to the works for guidance that there may possibly be some sources of danger they have slighted or omitted, quite as important as a trifling irregularity of diet, or a confined state of the bowels, and that whatever confidence a physician may have in his own mode of treatment, his services are of questionable value whenever he carries the bane as well as the antidote about his person.