HISTORY OF INOCULATION 421 



from smallpox patients. This, in many cases, brought about 

 protection against the disease. The practice of inoculation was 

 carried into Europe by way of Asia, Africa, and Constantinople. 

 In Turkey, certain old women took pus from the pustules of per- 

 sons suffering from smallpox and inoculated it into the veins of 

 well people. 



In 1717, Lady Mary Montague, while traveling in Turkey, had 

 her little son inoculated with smallpox, and he did not contract 

 the disease. Through this incident, the idea of inoculation as a 

 preventative was introduced into England, although many people 

 were afraid of its results. Several years later, authorities offered 

 a number of criminals confined in the Newgate Prison, England, 

 their freedom, if they would submit to an inoculation against 

 smallpox. They did so, the results were satisfactory, and they 

 received their freedom. After this, the practice gained steadily 

 in England. When a person was to be inoculated, he was usu- 

 ally kept on a light diet for about six weeks. He was then 

 purged and bled to make sure that his body was in good condi- 

 tion. Then he was inoculated with smallpox. Pus was taken 

 from the pustules of a person with a mild case of smallpox and 

 placed in several scratches made on the body of the patient. 

 This usually resulted in a mild form of smallpox to the person 

 treated, but was supposed to protect him against a very severe 

 form. This method of inoculation was somewhat dangerous 

 to a community, in as much as new cases of smallpox, however 

 mild, were likely to develop. 



History of vaccination. It had been a belief, for an unknown 

 length of time, in rural districts, that people who had contracted 

 cowpox, a disease of cows, did not take smallpox. A farmer 

 named Benjamin Jesty, in 1774, took some pus from the sore of a 

 cow with cowpox and inoculated his wife and children. This 

 made them immune to smallpox infection. But Jesty' s experi- 

 ment never became generally known. It was Edward Jenner 



