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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.

    72/412 (page 64)
    64: malignancy in the nature of the lately prevailing epidemic; and from what I have seen, I will venture to predict, that as the epidemic small- pox becomes more mild, the cases of eruption after vaccination will also become more mild, and that they will then be again generally ob- served under the form of Pip slight affection the horn-pock. But there is another eruptive disease slitatt I have long been in the habit of considering as the chicken-pox of Dr. Heberden, and which I have certainly not observed facts which could at all justify me in classing it as a variety of small-pox ; nay my observations lead me to consider it as a disease entirely different in its nature from the small-pox. - This eruptive disease, as I have elivineil it, generally attacks with little or no fever, the ap- pearance of'vesicles on the shoulders, neck, and breast, being often the first symptom observed. ‘The vesicles are often, when first seen, about the size of a split pea, perfectly transparent, and covered only by the cuticle, as thin as that separated by a scald or by a blister; they generally have at first an inflamed areola, but this seems also to be confined to the cuticle, and there seems to be little if any hardness in the true skin beneath or around them. On puncturing the vesicle, the clear lymph is wholly evacuated, the cuticle falls flat down, and very little if any hardness is perceived on passing the finger over the col-