INFECTION AND IMMUNITY 377 



a mild attack of the disease at a convenient time. The 

 method could not, in the very nature of things, attain 

 to any degree of popularity, though it is still practised 

 to some extent, and children are sometimes during the 

 vacation season thus exposed to chicken-pox and 

 measles in order that they may lose no time at school. 



It has been for centuries the practice of the Chinese to 

 induce small-pox by thrusting scabs from the pocks 

 into the noses of healthy persons or to tie them upon 

 their persons to produce a mild attack of the disease. 

 The method is crude and filthy and likely to result 

 disastrously. The Turks invented an improved method, 

 which when brought to western Europe was known as 

 "inoculation" and was practised with good enough 

 results to be continued until something better was 

 discovered. 



In her letter to Mrs. S. C. , dated Adrianople, 



April 10, O. S. 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montague 

 writes upon this subject as follows: "The small-pox, 

 so fatal and so general among us, is here entirely harm- 

 less by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term 

 they give it. There is a set of old women who make it 

 their business to perform the operation every autumn, 

 in the month of September, when the great heat is abated. 

 People send to one another to learn if any of their family 

 has a mind to have the small-pox; they make parties 

 for the purpose, and when they are met (commonly 

 fifteen or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a 

 nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, 

 and asks what veins you will have opened. She imme- 

 diately rips open that you offer her with a large needle 

 (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) 

 and puts into the vein as much venom as can lie upon 

 the head of her needle, and after binds up the little 

 wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner 

 opens four or five veins. The Grecians have commonly 

 the superstition of opening one in the middle of the 

 forehead, one in each arm, and on the breast, to mark 



