Dr. AmsLiE on Small-Pox and Inoculation in Eastern Countries. 73 



By an account published at Madras by Mr. A. Mackenzie, it would appear 

 that, from the 1st September 1806 to the 1st September 1807, there had 

 been vaccinated at the presidency of Fort St. George and the subordinate 

 vaccine stations subject to that authority, 243,175 persons of different sexes, 

 castes, and ages. Mr. Haughton, assistant surgeon of the coast artillery, who 

 returned from China in May 1809, informed me that he found the cow-pox 

 in high repute at Macao, under the zealous direction of Mr. A. Pearson, 

 surgeon of the Honourable Company's factory at Canton who had 

 written a short treatise on it, which had been admirably translated 

 into Chinese by Sir George Staunton. By an official report communicated 

 by Dr. Christie, superintendent of vaccination in Ceylon, I perceive 

 that in that island, during the year 1808, no less than 26,207 individuals 

 had undergone the operation and had the genuine disorder ; which made, 

 in all, vaccinated under that gentleman's care, since the introduction of it 

 at Trincomallie in 1802, up to 1808, 103,036 persons of all ages. Subsequent 

 and much more recent information* from Eastern countries, from India, 

 Persia,t Java, China, Sumatra, and Manilla, give the most pleasing assurances 

 of the success which invariably attends the adoption of the Jennerian disease 

 in those distant regions ; where a casual case of small-pox appearing after 

 it has, from its great mildness, long ceased to alarm, and where the con- 

 stant security which it affords against that horrific monster, the variola in 

 its malignant form, have at length happily convinced millions, that if, from a 

 powerful empire in the west came an inordinate thirst for dominion and the 

 sword of the conqueror, thence also came the sympathizing heart and the 

 healing hand. 



Edinburgh, 2Mh December 1826. 



• Up to the years 1822 and 1823. 



f It would appear by Morier's second journey to Persia, that, about the year 1810, the king of 

 that country actually caxmeA ferushes to be placed, in order to prevent t)ie women from taking 

 their children to tlie surgeons to be vaccinated ; and this was done at a time when, from the 

 anxiety of the natives themselves to adopt the preventive, there was every reason to hope that it 

 would become general in Tehran. In 1816, however, we learn by a communication from the 

 English ambassador at Ispahan, that the presumptive heir to the throne and fifteen of his suite 

 had been vaccinated, and that the blessing was making rapid strides throughout the Persian 

 dominions. — See Asiatic Journal for October 1816, and September 1818. 



Vol. II. L 



