284 Medicine. 



frequency of deformity, blindness, and other dread- 

 ful consequences inflicted on such as escaped with 

 their lives. 



The practice of Inoculation has reduced this 

 frightful malady to such a degree of mildness and 

 safety that it no longer excites the terror of the 

 community. The date of this interesting discovery 

 is lost in the obscurity of tradition and immemo- 

 rial usage. Traces of it may be found among the 

 traditions of many former ages in Great-Britain, 

 particularly in Wales and the Highlands of Scotland, 

 in Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, 

 and some other parts of Europe, in Africa and 

 Asia, particularly in Hindostan and China.' 



But the eighteenth century may boast of the first 

 regular and satisfactory notices of this noble im- 

 provement, and of making it to be understood and 

 practised in an intelligent manner among all the 

 enlightened part of mankind. It is generally said 

 that the Circassians first inoculated their children 

 in order to rear them as slaves for the Turkish Se- 



« It is a remarkable fact, that, in all the countries above mentioned, 

 there is satisfactory evidence of inoculation for the small-pox having been 

 practised by the common people, for many years before its introduction 

 by the physicians of Great-Britain; and, in some of them, as far back as 

 tradition can be traced. It is also a still more remarkable fact, that in 

 Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, among the ignorant peasantry of G^/-- 

 many, in the interior of Africa^ and in several parts of the Asiatic Conti- 

 nent, distant as they are from each other, differing widely as they do, in 

 manners, customs, laws and religion, the art of communicating this dis- 

 ease by inoculation was designated by the singular phrase of buying the 

 small-pox; because it was supcrstitiously imagined that inoculation would 

 not produce the proper effect, unless the person from whom the variolous 

 matter was taken received a piece of money, or some article in exchange 

 for it. See Dr. Woodville's History vf Inoculation. How shall we ac- 

 count for so many different and distant nations agreeing in so remarkable a 

 phrase to express inoculation, and agreeing also to connect with it such a su- 

 perstitious ceremony ? How shall we account, further, for this art being con- 

 fined chiefly to the common people, or the less civilized part of mankind, while 

 the learned were ignorant of it ? May it not be admitted as one proof of 

 the great antiquity of the practice, that precisely that portion of the com- 

 munity, whose habits, in every country, are in general mos-t simple, uni- 

 form, and stationary, were found to retain a practice which the more 

 polished had lost I 



