Copy 1

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

  • London Vaccine Institution
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    the strceess of the irresistibly impetuous followers of Mahomet. has been attributed. «The army and most of their attendants, except their children, having previously had the small-pox, would introduce ic into every fresh province they invaded; where it would attack niteteen in every twenty of the inhabitants, and prove fatal to one fourth of the whole people; when the contagion is first introduced among barbarians, its mortality usually rises to this proportion. Let us picture to ourselves the wretched distress that must inevitably result from such complht- cated calamities. In circumstances so embarrassing, few nations could resist a foreign invasion. It hence appears, that a. prineipal cause of the revolutions of nations is buried’ in the darkest oblivion.” Among the ignorant natives on the western coast of Afri¢a, the small-pox has often made considerable ravages. It sonietimes raged in the vessels conveying the wretched natives across the Atlantic into bondage, and thus even reached the colonies to which the poor suf- ferers wefe transported. The small-pox was carried from Africa, in 1738, into South Cat lina, where it proved exceedingly fatal} as it-did soon afterwards in Philadelphia, till the mortality, in both places, was arrested by ino- culation. By means of a present of an old infected blanket, to an American Indian, nearly a whole tribe of them was swept away by the small- pox. , The small-pox was first introduced into the frozen regions of Greenland in 1733; when the mortality of this disease was so great, that it almost depopulated the whole country, Some years ago, it made its appearance amongst a tribe of Esqui- maux Indians, on the coast of Labrador, and raged with upprece- dented violence. Many of the natives fled, to avoid the contagion, and did not venture to return till three years were elapsed, when their country had become a desart, in which they found the skeletons . of five hundred persons who had fallen victims to the disease. The small-pox was first introduced into New Spain in 1520, by a negro slave who attended Narvarez in his expedition against Cortes. ‘Torribio affirms, me one half of the people in the provinces yisited with this distemper ‘died. According to the reports which Cortes ordered to be made to him, there died in the empire of Mexico, alone, 3,500,000. Not long after this, 800,000 Indians perished by fresh variolous infection brought over'from Europe, which has con- tinued to communicate this scourge at intervals of thirty, twenty, or a less number of years. The infection extending itself from Vera C.2
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