Tracts on inoculation, written and published at St. Petersburg in the year 1768, by command of her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of all the Russias : with additional observations on epidemic small-pox, on the nature of that disease, and on the different success of the various modes of inoculation / By the Hon. Baron T. Dimsdale.

Dimsdale, Thomas, 1712-1800.

Date:: 1781

Credit: Tracts on inoculation, written and published at St. Petersburg in the year 1768, by command of her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of all the Russias : with additional observations on epidemic small-pox, on the nature of that disease, and on the different success of the various modes of inoculation / By the Hon. Baron T. Dimsdale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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I [ ”9 ] pend upon the number of inhabitants. But perhaps there is not any country in which the certainty of this polition is more indifputable than in Ruffia; for not only the ftrength of the empire, but the riches of every individual alfo, muft be in pro- portion to the degree of population. If therefore in London, which enjoys the many advantages already recited, more than 2000 perfons die annually of the fmall-pox, we may furely fuppofe, that the lofs which Ruffia, in its whole extent, fuftains by this diftemper in the fame fpace of time, amounts to two millions of fouls.|j And || Some who have eftimated the number of inhabi- tants in Ruffia, and calculated from the proportion of deaths that may be fuppofed to happen by the natural fmall-pox, have thought the number of two millions much two large; perhaps it may be fo, the conjecture was haftily written, at a time when my mind was deeply imprefied with the ravages of the fmall-pox in Ruffia. I went to a village near St. Peterfburg, to enquire for matter for inoculation, where the fmall-pox was fup- pofed to be, and, to my great furprize, was told that the patients were all dead ; aftonifhed at this anfwer, I

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