Jefferson as a vacccinator / by Henry A. Martin.

  • Martin, Henry A. (Henry Austin), 1824-1884.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Jefferson as a vacccinator / by Henry A. Martin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    aged women and children to inoculate each other, I cease l from furl her expressions of that kind, and endeavored to content myself with predicting the consequences. ♦'During this period, viz : the autumn of 1800, a singular traffic was carried on in the article of kine-pock matter, by persons not in the least connected witli the medical profession ; such as stage- drivers, pedlers, and in one instance the sexton of a church. I have known the shirt sleeve of a pdiioiil, stiff with the purulent discharge from a foul ulcer, made so by unskilful management, and full three weeks after vaccination, and in which there could have been none of the specific virus; I have known this out up into small strips, and sold about the country as genuine kine-pock matter, comitig directly from me. Several hundred people were inoculated with this caustic morbid poison, which produced gri at inflammation, sickness, fever, and in several cases oruptions, with a greater dis- turbance of the system than what occurs in the true disease. It is worthy of remark, that I coul 1 not influence these people to be- lieve that they had not p.issed through the true di ease, and that they were not secure from the small-pox. So true it is, that a man need not despair of making the common people believe anything but TRUTH ! That vagrant quacks should stroll about the country, inoculating for half a dollar a head, and some fur less, is not quite so surprising as that tfliey should, in such a country as ours, find people weak enoug i to receive it from such h iiids ! This impru- dence ought no% however, to be attributed to the common people alone. Many young practitioners in country vill iges come in for a share of it. Not a few first, inoculaied themselves, and then others, without having read more than the newspaper publications, and some not even those, and were looking out for eruption^, and fore- telling appearances and symptoms that are never attached to the disease ; and if any very d.sagreeable occurrence arose, in the course of this imprudent practice, the odium reverted to me. Following this is given a narrative of the terrible catastrophe resulting from all this reckless, ignorant, presumptuous, tampering with a new and as yet a very unperfecily known practice, at Marble- head, a large Massachusetts town, an event which had a partial parallel at Norfolk and Portsmouth in Virginia, and in other parts of the country. The result of all this malpractice and of an im-