Some lost works of Cotton Mather / by George Lyman Kittredge.
- George Lyman Kittredge
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some lost works of Cotton Mather / by George Lyman Kittredge. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
11/74 page 419
![I. Curiosities of the Small-Pox (1716); Address to the Physicians (1721); The Boylston Tract (1721). At the outset, a repetition of familiar things is necessary, in order to ensure clearness in the sequel. In particular, we must call to mind the main facts about two famous letters (the first by Timonius, the second by Pylarinus), since, though quite distinct and published at different times, they are often cited together, almost as if they were parts of one and the same document. In December, 1713, Emanuel Timonius (Timoni), a Doctor of Medicine of both Padua and Oxford,1 and a Fellow of the Royal Society, wrote a Latin letter from Constantinople, de- scribing inoculation for the smallpox as practised in that city. Undoubtedly the epistle was addressed to Dr. John Woodward, Professor of Physic at Gresham College,2 a leading member] of the Royal Society and a correspondent of Cotton Mather. At all events, it was Woodward who communicated it to the Society, giving an English abstract of that portion which dealt with the novel practice, and subjoining the etiological part in the original Latin. In this shape the letter of Timonius was printed in 1714, in No. 339 of the Philosophical Transactions? — the same number that contained excerpts from Cotton Mather's Curiosa Americana of 1712. Ini7i6 there appeared, in No. 347 of the same Transactions, another account of Con- stantinopolitan inoculation, entirely in Latin, from the pen of Jacobus Pylarinus (Pylarini), M.D., late Venetian consul in Smyrna.4 In 1717 Nos. 338-350 of the Philosophical Transac- tions were assembled and published as Vol. xxix. This volume Mr Dummer. On this variation see p. 455, note 1, infra. There is no date at- tached to the Loose Leaf List, but it certainly includes only Curiosa sent in 1721 and 1722 (all but one, probably, in the former year). 1 Timoni, Emanuel, D. Med. of Padua; incorporated 6 July, 1703 (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, iv. 14S8). 2 In Tractatus Bini de Nova Variolas per Transplantationem excitandi Me- Ihodo (Leyden, 1721), the excerpts from Timonius are styled compendium epistolae a Dn. E. Timoni ad J. Woodward mense Xbri. an. 1713 . . . con- scriptae. 3 For April-June, 1714. The year is mentioned in the colophon of No. 339: London, Printed . 1714. 4 Pylarinus's account was in a letter to Sir Hans Sloane, as appears from Sloane's paper in the Transactions, xlix. 516. On Timonius and Pylarinus see also xlix. 104-105.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21017633_0011.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
