VOL. LVlIT.J I'hiLOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 531 



in company with those of the Turks, by whom, as Dr. A. observes, the 

 practice is not admitted. But the Bedouins, less connected with the Turks, who 

 dwell within the city; those who live in tents without the city walls, and the 

 Arabs of the adjacent desart under the Emir, do commonly inoculate their 

 children. 



It being highly probable that a practice, which was so common in these parts, 

 might be known also to the more eastern Arabs, Dr. P. R. applied for informa- 

 tion to several Turkish merchants of Bagdat and Mousul, who occasionally 

 reside a few months in the year at Aleppo. By these he was assured, that 

 inoculation was not only common in both the cities first mentioned, but also at 

 Bassora; and that at Mousul particularly, when the small-pox first appeared in 

 any district of the city, it was a custom sometimes to give notice by a public 

 crier, that such as were inclined might take the opportunity to have their 

 children inoculated. 



Dr. P. R. inquired at the same time of the Bagdat merchants, whether the 

 Arabs, who dwell on the banks of the river between that city and Bassora, used 

 the same method of propagating the small-pox. They told him, they believed 

 it to be common also among those Arabs; though (with an ingenuousness not 

 usual in this country) they owned they had never thought of inquiring about the 

 matter, and might therefore perhaps be mistaken. But he afterwards had an 

 opportunity of being better informed by the Arabs, who come to Aleppo with the 

 eastern caravans; from whose accounts it vould appear, that inoculation has 

 from time immemorial been a practice among the different Arab tribes with 

 which they were conversant; comprehending, besides those in the numerous 

 encampments on the banks of the Euphrates, and the Tigris below Bagdat, 

 other tribes in the vicinity of Bassora, and in the desart. 



For before these several years, very few slaves had been brought from Georgia. 

 From what he could collect among those then at Aleppo, who remembered any 

 thing of their own country, inoculation was well known there; he had seen several 

 old Georgiana women, who had been inoculated, when children, in their fathers' 

 houses. In Armenia, the Turkoman tribes, as well as the Armenian christians, 

 have practised inoculation since the memory of man; but, like the Arabs, are 

 able to give no account of its first introduction among them. To what 

 extent inoculation reaches in the Gourdeen mountains, he did not know with 

 any certainty: it is practised by the Gourdeens in the mountains of Bylan, and 

 Kittis; and he had reason to think, extends much farther. At Da- 

 mascus, and along the coast of Syria and Palestine, inoculation has been 

 long known. In the Castravan mountains it is adopted by the Drusi, as well 

 as the christians. Whether the Arabs of the desart, to the south of Damascus, 

 are acquainted with this manner of communicating the small pox, he had not 



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