530 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO IJQB. 



the circumstance of its being a common practice among the Arabs must have 

 escaped him (his brother). He himself was ignorant of it for several years after 

 Dr. A. K. had left Aleppo, and a mere accident brought it at last to his know- 

 ledge. About 9 or 10 years before, while on a visit at a Turkish Harem, a lady 

 happened to express much anxiety for an only child, who had not then had the 

 small-pox; the distemper at that time being frequent in the city. None of 

 the ladies in the company had ever heard of inoculation ; so that, having once 

 mentioned it, he found himself obliged to enter into a detail of the operation, 

 and of the peculiar advantages attending it. Among the female servants 

 in the chamber was an old Bedouin, who having heard him with great attention, 

 assured the ladies, that his account was upon the whole a just one, only that 

 he did not seem so well to understand the way of performing the operation, 

 which she asserted should be done not with a lancet, but with a needle; she 

 herself had received the disease in that manner, when a child; had in her time 

 inoculated many; adding, that the practice was well known to the Arabs, and 

 that they termed it buying the small-pox. 



In consequence of this hint. Dr. P. R. set about the procuring more parti- 

 cular information from the Arabs of Aleppo ; and the result of his inquiry was, 

 that the practice of inoculation had been of long standing among them. They 

 indeed did not pretend to assign any period to its origin; but those of 70 years 

 old and upwards remembered to have heard it spoken of as a common custom of 

 their ancestors, and made little doubt of its being of as ancient a date as the 

 disease itself. Their manner of operating is, to make several punctures in 

 some fleshy part, with a needle imbued in variolous matter, taken from a 

 favourable kind of pock. They use no preparation of the body; and the disease 

 communicated in this way being, as they aver, always slight, they give them- 

 selves little or no trouble about the child in the subsequent stages of the 

 distemper. 



This method of procuring the disease is termed buying the small-pox, on the 

 following account. The child to be inoculated carries a few raisins, dates, sugar 

 plums, or such like, and showing them to the child from whom the matter is 

 to be taken, asks how many pocks he will give in exchange. The bargain being 

 made, they proceed to the operation. When the parties are too young to speak 

 for themselves, the bargain is made by the mothers. This ceremony, which 

 is still practised, points out a reason for the name given to inoculation by the 

 Arabs; but by what he could learn among the women, it is not regarded as 

 indispensably necessary to the success of the operation, and, is in fact, often 

 omitted. 



The Bedouins at Aleppo, who are employed in the service of the Harems, 

 more rarely have recourse to inoculation, their children being often brought up 



