[COW sb.1] Also 8–9 -pocks, with sing. -pock. A vaccine disease that appears on the teats of cows in the form of vesicles (pocks) of a blue or somewhat livid color. It was established by Dr. Edward Jenner in 1798 that the communication of this to the human subject by vaccine inoculation (VACCINATION) gives immunity (whole or partial) from the attack of small-pox.
A single pustule is called a POCK; the plural pocks taken as the name of the disease (cf. measles), is conventionally spelt pox.
[Rep. Committee Ho. Comm. (1802), XIV. 178. (Witness stated) It was in the month of May 1780 that Dr. Jenner first informed him of the particular nature of the cow pox as a sure preventive of small pox.]
1798. E. Jenner (title), An Enquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ; a Disease discovered in some of the Western Counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the Cow-pox. Ibid., 45. The Cow-pox protects the human constitution from the infection of the small pox.
1800. Med. Jrnl., III. 176. Traditionally, this fact has been established time immemorial, with regard to the casual Cow-Pock.
1806. R. Hill (title), Cow-Pock Inoculation Vindicated.
1851. Ord. & Regul. R. Engineers, § 27. 125. Women and Children who have not had the Small or Cow-Pox will not be allowed … in Barracks.
1866. A. Flint, Princ. Med. (1880), 1042. Cowpox is transferred to man and from one person to another by the introduction of a virus, and never, at a distance, by infection.
β. Sometimes called Kine-pox.
1803. E. S. Bowne, in Scribner’s Mag., II. (1887), 171/1. I had had the Kine Pox.
1868. B. J. Lossing, Hudson, 215. There was Philipsburg, where the Continental Army was encamped, and almost every soldier was inoculated with the kine-pox, to shield him from the ravages of the small-pox.
