Medicine. 285 



raglio; and it was certainly first introduced into 

 Constantinople, from Georgia, towards the end of 

 the preceding age. From Constantinople the Bri- 

 tish nation received an account of the practice of 

 it by the celebrated Lady M. W. Montague, who 

 caused the disease to be thus communicated to her 

 own children. In 1721, inoculation was first re- 

 gularly adopted in England; and in the succeed- 

 ing year, the operation being performed upon 

 some of the children of the Royal family, it soon 

 began to be in vogue. Objections both of a phy- 

 sical, moral and religious kind were urged against 

 this new practice, with great zeal and intempe- 

 rance, by many respectable persons of the medical 

 and clerical professions, as well as by others of 

 inferior character. These objections, for some 

 time, excited scruples in the minds of many well- 

 disposed people, and greatly retarded the progress 

 of inoculation. Having at length, however, sur- 

 . mounted these difficulties, the value of the dis- 

 covery became every day more highly rated, and 

 before the middle of the century might be con- 

 sidered as established upon the firmest basis. 



In the year 1721, and in the same month in 

 which the daughter of Lady Montague was inocu- 

 lated in England, this mode of communicating 

 the small-pox was introduced at Boston, in Mas- 

 sachusetts. Dr. Cotton Mather, one of the Mi- 

 nisters of that town, having observed, in a volume 

 o^ the Philosophical Tj-ansactions, printed in Lon- 

 don, some communications from Constantinople 

 and Smyrna, giving a favourable account of the 

 practice, and the small-pox beginning, about the 

 same time, to spread in the town, he recom- 

 mended to the physicians of his acquaintance to 

 make trial of inoculation. They all declined it ex- 

 cepting Dr. BoYLSTON. He began with his own 

 phildren and servants. But the degree of odium 



