The care of infants : a manual for mothers and nurses / by Sophia Jex-Blake.
- Sophia Jex-Blake
- Date:
- 1903
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The care of infants : a manual for mothers and nurses / by Sophia Jex-Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.
103/136 (page 83)
![VII.] INTRODUCTION OF INOCULATION. ^53 pox; and we have but to refer to the writings of physicians of that time to see how frequently it was followed by deafness, glandular swellings, obstinate ulcerations, etc. We need only realise this awful condition of things to feel, as our ancestors must have felt, that a mode of deliver- ance was more desirable than words could express. If, at the present day, any learned man were able to announce that he had discovered a safe and simple process by means of which we might defy cholera, he would indeed merit our best gratitude, but he would not rescue from death anything like the proportion of lives that have been saved by the enormous reduction of small-pox mortality. II. The first hope of deliverance arose from the fact that a person who had once had small-pox seldom took it a second time, and this had in eastern countries originated the practice of Inoc- ulation; by which is meant the voluntary taking of small-pox under favourable conditions, to avoid the far greater danger attending it under worse circumstances. This practice was introduced into England in the year 1721 by Lady Mary Wortley Montague. It was found that if small-pox was thus voluntarily taken, by introducing under the skin some of the virm (or small-pox poison) from another person, the disease was almost always very mild, and no subsequent infection need be feared. This was hailed as a discovery of the most benefi- cent kind, and so it was as regards the persons who](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28717776_0103.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
