Copy 2

An account of the varioloid epidemic which has lately prevailed in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland : with observations on the identity of chicken-pox with modified small-pox in a letter to Sir James M'Grigor ... / by John Thomson.

  • Thomson, John, 1765-1846.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of the varioloid epidemic which has lately prevailed in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland : with observations on the identity of chicken-pox with modified small-pox in a letter to Sir James M'Grigor ... / by John Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    60/412 (page 52)
    Oe dary small-pox, was actually that disease. These cases of secondary smail-pox have all been seen and admitted to be such by other practitioners _ besides myself, several of whom still continue to believe in the separate existence of chicken-pox. ‘The reality, therefore, of the recurrence of small- pox in these cases does not rest upon my single opinion. Besides, I know well that similar cases have been observed by other practitioners, in several of the places in which the present epi- demic has prevailed. Indeed, I am satisfied, from what I have seen of such cases, that the in- stances of secondary small-pox which have oc- curred in the present epidemic, must have been considerably greater than appears from the cases reported to me; for the secondary small-pox which I have seen, have frequently occurred: in a form so like chicken-pox, that such cases must have often, in other instances, I conceive, been mistaken for that disease. ‘The greater compar- ative mortality also, which, during the present epidemic, has been observed in cases acknow- ledged to be secondary small-pox, than in those who had passed through the process of vaccin- ation, 1s in some measure to be accounted for, I should imagine, by practitioners seldom ad- mitting, unless in very severe cases, varioloid eruptions in those who have previously passed through small-pox, to be that disease, and by their considering all the milder varioloid erup-