Читать книгу The Physical Training of Children онлайн

66 страница из 86

48. Are you not likely to catch not only the cow-pox, but any other disease that the child has from whom the matter is taken?

The same objection holds good in cutting for small-pox (inoculation)—only in a tenfold degree—small-pox being such a disgusting complaint. Inoculated small-pox frequently produced and left behind inveterate “breakings-out,” scars, cicatrices, and indentations of the skin, sore eyes, blindness, loss of eyelashes, scrofula, deafness—indeed, a long catalogue of loathsome diseases. A medical man, of course, will be careful to take the cow-pox matter from a healthy child.

49. Would it not be well to take the matter direct from the cow?

If a doctor be careful—which, of course, he will be—to take the matter from a healthy child, and from a well-formed vesicle, I consider it better than taking it direct from the cow, for the following reasons: The cow-pox lymph, taken direct from the cow, produces much more violent symptoms than after it has passed through several persons; indeed, in some cases, it has produced effects as severe as cutting for the small-pox; besides, it has caused, in many cases, violent inflammation and even sloughing of the arm. There are also several kinds of spurious cow-pox to which the cow is subject, and which would be likely to be mistaken for the real lymph. Again, if even the genuine matter were not taken from the cow exactly at the proper time, it would be deprived of its protecting power.