History of Animal Plagues. 85 



now, thev challenged no such particular regard I do not 



take the small-pox in general to depend on either season or tem- 

 perature of the air; for in different places, in the same climate 

 and constitution, I find them a perpetual epidemic, scarce ever 

 out in all places of Britain at once; and besides (as Dr Lister and 

 Dr Hillary well observe), they are originally an exotic disease, un- 

 known to Europe, Asia Minor, or Africa, before the spice trade 

 was opened to the remotest part of the East Indies, when they 

 were first brought into Africa, thence into Europe. The first 

 time we meet with them in English history is in 907.'^ 



In a Saxon ' Laece Boc,' or Leech Book, of the first half of 

 the tenth century, we find several recipes for the cure of the 

 small-pox, which is there termed ' poc addle' (pocabie), or pock 

 ailment. The recipes consist of internal remedies, chiefly de- 

 coctions of herbs, and salves (Sealp). One of the recipes says: 

 'Against pocks (pi f^poccum), a man shall freely employ blood- 

 letting and drink melted butter, a bowl full of it : if they break 

 out one must delve or dig away each one of them with a thorn ; 

 and then let him drip wine or alder drink within them, then 

 they will not be seen, or no traces will remain.' And to show 

 that the disease was greatly dreaded, we have a prayer against 

 it. In a Cottonian MS. there is a charm against small- 

 pox. The MSS. containing these recipes, prayers, and charms, 

 were, in all probability, written at periods but little removed from 

 the date when Rhazes composed his monograph on this serious 

 malady. 



Burton^ says that the ' Judari,' or small-pox, appears to be 

 indigenous to the countries bordering upon the Red Sea. He 

 observes that we read of it there in the earliest works of the 

 Arabs; and even to the present day it sometimes sweeps through 

 Arabia and the Somali country with desolating violence. Con- 

 jecture, however, goes a long way beyond reason when it dis- 

 covers small-pox in the Tayr Ababil, the 'swallow-birds,' which, 

 according to the Koran, destroyed the Abyssinian host of Abra- 

 hat el Ashrand in 569 or 572.^ There is some difliculty about 



1 T. Short. Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 361,415. 



^ Burton. Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Mcccali, vol. i. p. 367. 



^ Ilccker, GebchiclUe der Mcdicin, vol. ii. p. 152. 



