Notes suggested by the Franklin-Heberden pamphlet of 1759 / by Henry K. Cushing.

  • Cushing, Henry K. (Henry Kirke), 1827-1910
Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes suggested by the Franklin-Heberden pamphlet of 1759 / by Henry K. Cushing. 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.

    14/42 (page 6)
    [2771 Her only brother, the young Lord Kingston, heir to the Kingston Dukedom, died of it. We can appreciate the interest with which Lady Mary heard of, and made herself acquainted with, the subject of inoculation for the small pox while in her residence in Turkey. As you know, the early history of inoculation is largely one of speculation and probability. In the early years of the 18th century intimations, through letters and reports, began to appear in Europe, that in the Levantine regions a method of inducing a mild form of small pox was practiced by the common folk. As information developed it became known that in Hin- dustan, Central Asia, China, Arabia and Moslem portions of Africa the practice in somewhat varied form, had so long been followed that its early history had been lost. As the subject became generally known and considered it was also found that in some parts of Great Britain and Europe a practice of inoculation had long been resorted to by the peasantry, usually under the name of buying the small pox, a designation also common for it in the Levant, and parts of Africa. The South of Wales, Pembrokeshire, parts of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Auvergne and Perigord in Prance, and Naples and Pavia in Italy are [278] claimed, with seeming good reason, as seats of this practice.* The designation was due to the custom of offering gifts or compensation to the individual who was to furnish the desired variolous matter. It is fairly supposable that in divers countries and local- ities, experience through centuries with small pox epidemics, had revealed to occasional acute observers here and there, that persons suffering the ill received through abrasions or wounds on the hands had a milder form, than when it was taken in the ordinary way of infection. Inducing the disease in imi- tation, in hope of securing a milder type, would seem a natural sequence of consideration and action. It was the custom of some of the eastern peoples to inoculate between ' Crookshank, Monroe on Small Pox, 1818.