Medicine: Cowpox

In southern New York state, a dairyman, his wife and their hired man stretched out their hands palm upwards, like suppliants, to Dr. H. P. Senftner, associate director of the state department of health. Their palms were covered with great ulcers, about one-half inch in diameter, one-sixteenth to one-eighth inch deep; the margins were irregular in outline and thickened. Dr. Senftner told the three to flip their hands over. The backs were covered with similar sores. One of the patients had the same sort of lesion on his face. All three had rather high fever, pain in their hands and in one case a swollen lymph node in the armpit. Dr. Senftner went out into the cow-yard and found the dairy-man’s herd of 13 cows all sick, their udders and teats pocked with pustules. The diagnosis was: cowpox, long a rare disease among animals, as well as among humans. The treatment: applications of mercurochrome and hydrogen peroxide to the sores and wet dressings of aluminum acetate.

Cowpox and smallpox are intimately related. Pus taken from a human smallpox sore and innoculated into a cow gives the beast cowpox. The cow’s system reduces the virility of the smallpox germs. Pus from a cowpox sore in turn, through vaccination, makes humans resistant to smallpox; it makes them immune. The three New York victims, by milking their infected cows, vaccinated themselves unwittingly. Previously they had not been vaccinated in the ordinary way. Had they been, they probably would not have contracted the cowpox.