London Vaccine Institution, for inoculating and supplying matter free of expense : Report and Prospectus.

  • London Vaccine Institution
Date:
1814
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: London Vaccine Institution, for inoculating and supplying matter free of expense : Report and Prospectus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the kind has yet occurred in the practice of vaccination. If such even should ever arrive, our remedy is at hand. We turn to the cow, or to the patient on whom the cow-pox appears, and obtain cer¬ tain protection from the pestilential contagion. in whatever way the small-pox were first produced, it appears that the frst notice we have of them, in history, is given by Arabian wri¬ ters. In an old Arabic manuscript, preserved in the library at Ley¬ den, it is stated, <f In this year, (that of the birth of Mahomet,) the small-pox and measles made their appearance in Arabia.” In the account of the siege of Mecca, in the sixth century, as given by El Hameesy, an Arabian author, and related by the cele¬ brated traveller Mr. Bruce, it is said that Abreha, who commanded the expedition against Mecca, “ had now refreshed his army, when tfere appeared, coming from the sea, a flock of birds called Ababil, having faces like lions, and each of them in his claws holding a small stone like a pea, which they let fall on Abreha’s army, so that they were all destroyed.” At this time the small-pox and measles first broke out in Arabia, and almost destroyed the army of Abreha* *. On this relation it is ingeniously observed by the late Dr. Woodvil'e, in his history of the small-pox, that “ it is evidently consistent with the genius and machinery of fable, to suppose the Ababil symbolical of a pestiferous contagion, and the stones like peas carried in their claws, emblematic of variolous pustules, by which the whole story becomes connected and intelligible.” The following extracts from different authors may give some idea of the destruction and desolation heretofore occasioned by the small¬ pox in every quarter of the world. “ There is no disease,” says Dr. Thornton, “ that the medical writer has to describe, which presents a more melancholy scene, than the natural small-pox, as it very frequently occurs. When the physician is first called to the bed-side of the patient, he is enabled at once to form a probable conjecture as to the approaching disorder. 1. From the frequent sighings and sobbings of the person labour- ~~~ -—----——-—1— -% * That deleterious disease, so often the reward, or rod, of illicit sexual intercourse, which without the application of a certain specific remedy, certainly destroys its miserable victims (and thus, if at any time it have been produced, by debauch, among savage nations, must have extinguish¬ ed itself by the certain death of the infected,) is traced to the siege of Naples, by the armies of France, in the 15th century.
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