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



in Hindustan from the most remote antiquity. Condamine, wbile at Naples 

 in 1769, was told that inoculation had been common there from time im- 

 memorial ; and Dr. Russell* has stated, that the Turkman tribes had been in 

 the habit of inoculating for ages past. Nay, something very like this is also 

 expressed by Niebuhr, with regard to the adoption of it amongst the Ara- 

 bians.! Of the exact epoch at which this method of mitigating the distem- 

 per first attracted notice in England, we have sufficient testimony ; it ori- 

 ginated in a communication made by Dr. Emanuel Timoni, a Greek, who 

 had studied at Oxford and Padua, to his friend Dr. Woodward, from Con- 

 stantinoplet in 1713, in consequence of having witnessed the good effects of 

 it in that city ; which communication was afterwards published, in 1714, in 

 the Philosophical Transactions : and it is as well known, that Lady Wortley 

 Montague's daughter was inoculated in London witli success in 1722, by 

 Mr. Maitland, who had performed the same operation on her son, a short 

 time before, at Constantinople, and who lost no time in disseminating the 

 blessino- throughout the British dominions. In South Wales, however, and 

 in the Highlands, § inoculation is considered by some to have been practised 

 by the old women at a period antecedent to its introduction from tlie East : 

 and I do not think it at all improbable, countenanced as the assumption is 

 by a letter from Dr. Wright to Mr. Bevan, which may be found in the Phi- 

 losophical Transactions for 1722, and also by Dr. Monro's account of vac- 

 cination in Scotland. 



Although we cannot say that inoculation was ever very generally adopted 

 in India by the natives, yet it is sufficiently well understood, that it is prac- 

 tised there, and in various modes, in different provinces. It is in the hands 

 of a particular tribe of Brahmens ; but who, though they are remunerated 

 for their labours, are, I fear, often more mysterious than industrious in their 

 avocation. Mr. Moore gives a full account of the method pursued in some 

 of the northern tracts of Hindustan, as described, I think, by Mr. Holwell ; 

 and notices the necessary prayers that are recited during the ceremony of 

 the operation, as appointed in the Atharva Veda to propitiate the small-pox 



* See an account of inoculating in Arabia, in a letter from Dr. P. Russel, Phil. Trans., vol. 

 Ivi. p. 140. 

 f See Niebuhr's account of Arabia, p. 123, French edition. 

 J Into which city it would appear to have been introduced from the Morea. 

 J See Dr. Wilson's Work on Febrile Diseases, vol. ii. p. 286. 



