POSTVACCINAL (COWPOX) ENCEPHALITIS

Abstract
Cerebrospinal complications following antismallpox vaccination possess sufficiently characteristic pathologic features to be termed postvaccinal or cowpox encephalitis. In addition to the well known types of encephalitis, such as the epidemic (lethargic), hemorrhagic, syphilitic, and the ones complicating typhus fever, poliomyelitis and other infectious diseases, one should recognize also an encephalitis caused by cowpox. Thoroughly studied first (1912) but not published by Turnbull and McIntosh1in England, such complications were described in 1925, in detail, by European investigators, Luksch2in Czechoslovakia and Bastiaanse3in Holland. The pathologic studies by Turnbull and McIntosh, Bouman and Bok,4and especially Perdrau5are so complete that little can be added. In general, the literature pertaining to this apparently new morbid condition and covering its various phases—clinical, epidemiologic, immunologic and bacteriologic—is extensive. It has been repeatedly referred to in the editorials, letters and abstracts of theJournal of the American Medical

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