Abstract
For about twenty years there has been observed in tropical and subtropical America an eruptive disease of very low mortality, the identity of which with smallpox has been a subject of question, especially since previous epidemics of smallpox in these regions have been attended with high mortality. This disease outside the United States has been variously termed alastrim, varioloid varicella, and kaffir pox. It has been asserted that a point of difference between this disease and true smallpox was the resistance of lower animals to inoculation; no positive result from inoculation with West Indian or South American strains has been reported in any of the available literature, though Aragao 1 described the development of Guarnieri bodies in the cornea of rabbits inoculated with this disease.
Through Professor W. G. MacCallum, of Johns Hopkins Medical School, pustule contents preserved in 0.5 per cent. phenol at a low temperature for several months, were obtained from two Jamaican cases; also through Lt. Com. G. F. Clark, U. S. N., crusts, preserved dry for two weeks, were obtained from a case in Haiti. These were used for the cutaneous inoculation of two Mucacus rhesus, which showed no reaction other than a serous exudate at the site of inoculation for eight days, when an eruption developed at two of the three sites of inoculation on each monkey. The second of the two Jamaican viruses gave no result on either monkey. The typical lesion consisted of a papule with reddened periphery surrounding a white area with a brownish depressed center. The lesions were discrete, five to eight in number in three of the sites inoculated, and confluent in the fourth. No complete vesiculation appeared, but the itching was evidently severe, since the monkeys abracted the tops of the lesions.
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