54 Dr. Ainslie on SmalUPox and Inoculation in Eastern Countries. 



not only in India, but in several of the adjacent territories,* from time im- 

 memorial ; and it is but too true, that till the good effects of vaccination 

 began to be there experienced, in no region of the earth were its ravages 

 more appalling. Not rarely did it happen, that whole villages were depo- 

 pulated : the distemper, besides, but too often assumed its most malignant 

 form {variola pustuUs ?iumerosis cojrfluentibiis), which, amongst the natives, 

 proved so generally mortal, that the relations of the poor suiferers, on dis- 

 covering its putrid nature, not unfrequently cut asunder the ties of human 

 affection, and deserted them altogether, moving off to a different part of the 

 country, or to the opposite and windward side of a town, with such of the 

 family as either had the disease of a milder kind (variola pustulis paucis 

 discretis), or had hitherto escaped the contagion, 



Hillaryt speaks of the small-pox and measles as " originally hatched and 

 " bred in, and properly indigenous to Arabia, probably in its most southern 

 " districts." Mead, on the other hand, thought it commenced its havoc in 

 Africa, and more especially in Ethiopia : a notion which appears to be con- 

 firmed by Dr. John Reiske, of Leyden, who being well versed in Arabic 

 literature, ascertained from certain relics, that about the year of our Lord 

 572, the same in which Mahomet was born, Ethiopian traders carried the 

 malady for the first time into Arabia. Dr. Friend, however, was of an opposite 

 opinion ; and in his " History of Medicine " tells us, that he believes it was 

 first brought into Egypt during the caliphat of Omar, about the year of 

 Christ 640, by the Arabians, who had been infected by some Eastern or 

 remote nation : and why not, we should add, according to the testimony of 

 Webster,1: by the Hindus ? " Ab India orientale in Egjqitum, inde in Ara- 

 " biam, denique in Europam, variola pestis iUa gravissima, commigrasse 

 " videtur." Although, by this quotation, the learned physician seems to 

 have thought that the small-pox had, on its way from the East, reached 

 Egypt previously to its committing its ravages in Arabia ; at all events, 

 once established there, we can readily conceive how quickly it must have 

 been spread by the Saracen conquerors. 



Baron Dimsdale says : " it is granted that the small-pox was imported from 

 " Asia by the crusaders, and did not shew itself in Europe before the thir- 



* See an account of an embassy to Thibet, by Captain Samuel Turner, in 1800, pp. 219-220. 



f See Woodville's History of the Small-Pox,vol. i. p. 2. 



% Vide Medecin. Prac. System. Carol. Webster, edit, tom i. p. 288. 



