Dr. Ainslie on Small-Pox and Inoculation in Eastern Countries. 55 



" teenth century :" a statement which we cannot reconcile with the facts, 

 that both Constantius in Italy and Avenzoar in Spain, had noticed the evil 

 as common in those dominions, in the eleventh century. Nay, we know 

 that Mr. Moore, in his history* of the disease, gives us a curious account 

 of the primary introduction of both it and the measles into Spain, by means 

 of a Saracen invasion, occasioned by a rape committed by a king, and the 

 consequent vengeance of a beautiful woman, as far back as the year 7 10. 

 At what time Britain was first made to feel the effects of a disorder which 

 other nations already lamented, it is impossible exactly to determine. We 

 can only say with confidence, that by the earliest British medical writers, 

 which were those of the thirteenth century,t the complaint is generally 

 noticed. New Spain, according to Garcia,1: was originally visited by it in 

 1520, when he declares it proved fatal to half the people of the provinces 

 to which the infection extended. Then again we learn from Mr. Conda- 

 mine, in his "Memoire sur I'Inoculation," p. 61, that about fifty years after 

 the discovery of Peru, this affection was carried over from Europe to 

 America by the way of Carthagena. Now, as Peru was discovered by 

 Pi£arro§ in 1526, it would appear by this account, that the variola did 

 not reach America before 1576, which but ill agrees with what has been 

 stated by Garcia. In addition to all this I must here observe that, accord- 

 ing to Robertson, Hispaniola|| suffered dreadfully from the small-pox in 1517: 

 but as such discussion may be considered as a little foreign to my sub- 

 ject, referring as it does more immediately to Eastern countries, I briefly 

 hint, before proceeding to further particulars, that the small-pox in a 

 northern direction did not arrive at the frozen region of Greenland If 

 before the year 1733, when it nearly carried off the whole of the inha- 

 bitants. 



Whatever may be the varying sentiments regarding the era when the 

 small-pox first shed its malignity on mankind, or its subsequent propaga- 

 tion, the same differences do not exist with respect to the writer who first 



• See History of tlie Small-Pox, page 76. 



f Dr. Woodville, however, from an examination of many books in the British Museum, states 

 that he has reason to think the sniall-pox was known in our island long before the Crusades 

 began, in 109G. 



X Garcia, Origin, p. 88, cited by Robertson in his History of America, vol. iii. p. 400. 



§ See Robertson's History of America, book iii. || Ibid, book iii. 



% Grantz's History of Greenland, vol. i. p. 336. 



