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III. Observations respecting the Small-Pox and Inoculation in Eastern Coun- 

 tries ; with some Account of the Introduction of Vaccination into India. By 

 Whitelaw Ainslie, M.D. M.R.A.S. 



Read June 16, 1827. 



There was a time, when to treat of the small-pox must have been a 

 task truly painful ; when, alas ! little more could be done than to trace its 

 devastations and its horrors : but, thanks to heaven and the perseverance of 

 the benevolent, those days are long past, and the subject can at length be 

 viewed in a very different light. Relieved from the distressing office of 

 but too frequently having to offer a vain consolation to a virtuous mother 

 sorrowing for the loss of a darling child, medical men can now speak of the 

 disease with far other feelings ; with the same satisfaction, to use a meta- 

 phor, that is felt in painting the blessings of an honourable peace, which 

 have succeeded to a long and disastrous war ; or the joy of a private family, 

 which has finally risen into comfort and security, through a protracted 

 struggle of domestic affliction. 



Much difference of opinion has existed with regard to the period when 

 the small-pox, or as it has lately been scientifically named, the emphyesis 

 variola, made its first appearance in the world ; and some authors have 

 believed that this disorder, as well as the measles, with which it was in 

 early ages confounded, were coeval with the human race. We certainly 

 have no proof that either the Greeks or Romans were acquainted with it : at 

 least no account is to be found in any of their works which perfectly agrees 

 with its pathognomonic signs,* minutely examined as those works have 

 been, for the purpose of such discovery, by several of our most distinguished 

 writers.t That it raged in China long before it was observed in Europe, is 



* It would seem, however, that both Salmasitis, and after him Johannes Halm, a Dutch writer, 

 had entertained a different opinion, and supposed that the disease had been described under 

 another name (anthrax) by Hippocrates, and noticed by Celsus, Galen, and ^Etius : a supposi- 

 tion so absurd, that it cannot for a moment be listened to. 



t See Mead's medical works, vol. i. p. 229 ; also Willan on the Diseases of the Skin, vol. i. 

 pp. 2S 1-252. 



