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.

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    the thumb and forefinger, which strongly suggests that they [278] were simply copying the hint indicated by accidental infection through the hands. In all those regions of Asia and Africa where sowing, en- grafting or inoculating the small pox was practiced, the camel was domesticated and the milk generally used. Dr. Jenner10 refers to the traditionary accounts, handed down by the Arabian physicians, that the small pox was or- iginally derived from the camel. Casual infection through the hands, in grooming or milking these beasts, may have given the original suggestion of perpetuating a milder type by artificial transmission, as a similar condition in Gloxices- tershire dairies put Jenner on his long series of investigations on the cow pox. The communications of Europeans, sojourning in the Le- vant, concerning this procedure made little appreciable im- press on the convictions of their home peoples. Of tbese communications the historic ones are those of Dr. Emanuelle Timoni Patavino, a Greek physician, graduate of Pavia and Oxford, resident in Constantinople early in the 18th century, who in 1713 wrote a relation of the subject to a London phy- sician, Dr. Jobn Woodward, who communicated it to the Royal Society; and that of Dr. Jacobus Pylarinus, a Venetian physician, dedicated bo the English consul at Smyrna,11 which reported the Byzantine method of inoculating. The two ap- peared simultaneously in Vol. XXIX of the Royal Transac- tions, in 1717. (See Appendix, II. page 884.) Lady Mary Wortley Montague courageously determined not only to adopt this oriental custom of the common people, but to impart to friends at home the knowledge she had gained. To her influence and example, according to popular im- pression, we are indebted for its introduction and adoption in England, and for its consequent diffusion through Chris- tendom.u Lady Mary's first letter on the topic was to her 10 Baron's Life of Jenner, vol. i, p. 522. Illustri. Preclaro atque Erudissimo Viro AVilhelmo Scher- ard, Dignissimo pro inclyta Natione Britannica Nunc Smirnis Consulo. u Baron's Life of Edward Jenner, vol. 1, p. 230.