5S2 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1768. 



hitherto been able to learn; buta native of Mecca, whom he had occasion to converse 

 with this summer, assured him, that he himself had been inoculated in that city. 



It has already been mentioned, that the Turks at Bagdat and Mousul make 

 no scruple to inoculate their children. He had seen also some Turkish strangers 

 at Aleppo, who had been inoculated at Erzeroon. Hence it is probable that the 

 Turks, in other parts of the Ottoman empire, do not merely, as fatalists, reject 

 inoculation; but that other considerations, which have influence in countries 

 where fatalists are ridiculed or anathematized, concur likewise in Turkey, to 

 oppose the reception of a practice so beneficial to mankind. The child of a 

 bashaw here, was by his advice inoculated about 8 years before; but that is the 

 only instance he had known among the Turks at Aleppo. 



The Jews at Aleppo absolutely reject inoculation ; partly from scruples of a 

 religious kind, and partly from the distrust of its success. At Bagdat, Bassora, 

 and in Palestine, having acquired a more favourable opinion of an operation 

 which they see so often performed with success, they had got the better of other 

 scruples, and join in the practice with their neighbours. 



He had several times conversed on this subject with the Mufti, as also 

 with some of the Rabbis; but the theology of both was too abstruse for him: 

 their arguments, so far as he was able to comprehend them, seemed to be no 

 less cogent against all chirurgical operations, which were attended with any 

 degree of danger to life, than against inoculation. 



In the different countries above-mentioned, inoculation is performed nearly 

 in the same manner. The Arabs affirmed, that the punctures might be made 

 indifferently in any fleshy part: those he had occasion to examine, have all (a 

 very few excepted) had the mark between the thumb and the fore finger. Some 

 of the Georgians had been inoculated in the same part, but most of them on 

 the fore arm. Of the Armenians some had been inoculated in both thighs; 

 but the greatest part (like the Arabs) bore the marks upon the hand. Some of 

 the Georgian women remembered, that rags of a red colour were chosen in 

 preference for the binding up the arm, a circumstance of which he had been able 

 to discover no trace among the Arabs. Buying the small pox, is likewise the 

 name universally applied to the method of procuring the disease. There are, 

 it is true, other terms made use of both in the Arabic and Turkish languages; 

 and at Aleppo, it is principally known to the christians by the name of ino- 

 culation. 



From the sameness of the name, as well as from the little diversity observable 

 in the manner of performing the operation, it is probable the practice of 

 inoculation in these countries was originally derived from the same source: and 

 that it is of considerable antiquity, can hardly be doubted, if we consider the 

 large extent of country over which it is found to have spread, and the obstacles it 



