WCP3042

[1]

28 Great Ormond Street. London W.C.

2^nd. August 1889

My dear Sir

I find it not easy to deal with your very legitimate inquiry about the alleged immunity. It occurs to me, however, that you might give the generally accepted medical doctrine a fairer chance by taking the endemic London smallpox of last century. I enclose the figures, & sh[oul]d be glad to have the paper back some time, as I have no copy. The cases would be, on a [2 words illeg.], six times the deaths. The population of London in these years, I have not the means at hand of ascertaining. [2] Your explanations (a | b | c | d) are reasonable in kind — I am not clear that they are not controvertible here & there. I used much the same arguments in dealing with whooping-cough in a recent book — having a decided opinion that it differs from the diseases with which it is usually classed in fundamental respects.

I cannot help thinking that we have reason for the empirical teaching that one attack of smallpox finds a [2 word illeg.] even in Africa, where negroes [3] [1 word illeg.] & others [2 words illeg.] constantly exposed, it attacks once, and is then done with. As the passage mentioned in the Address which I send, I endeavoured to give an explanation of the immunisation ^from smallpox, in [1 word illeg.] to the [1 word illeg.] to repeated attacks of other skin diseases. I join the acquisition of specific character to the habit of the disease attacking only once.

It is not easy to say how large a [1 word illeg.] where the exceptions are. In a letter of Jenner to Mssrs also of 19^th June, 1811 he says: "the complex [4 words illeg.] forever if it would give uniform [1 word illeg.] to the constitution, when it is well [4] known that smallpox cannot; for we have more than one thousand cases to [1 word illeg.] the contrary, and fortunately [1 word illeg.] of them in the [1 word illeg.] of the belief.

I suspect there were in small part cases of bogus inoculations of small pox — if very different insignificance from full eruptions of the disease on the skin.

In any case, we ought I think, to [1 word illeg.] upon the fact that a cowpox is not small pox in any conceivable sense. Doubtless it was accepted as such at the outset, Jenner having managed to [1 word illeg.] the [1 word illeg.].Whatever be the value of the immunity doctrine in general, cowpox against small pox does not come under the head of Dr. Jenner, [1 word illeg.]

Yours sincerely | C. Creighton [signature]