On the American continent it
was believed that small-pox was unknown until the conquest of
Mexico. It has been spread through various channels to nearly all
the Indian tribes of both North and South America, and among
these primitive people, unprotected by inoculation or
vaccination, its ravages have been frightful.
That small-pox a disease so general and so fatal at one
time--has, through the ingenuity of man, in civilized communities
at least, become almost extinct, is one of the greatest triumphs
of medicine.
Inoculation was known in Europe about 1700, and in 1717 the
famous letter of Lady Montagu from Adrianople was issued,
containing in part the following statements:--
"The small-pox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here
entirely harmless, by the invention of ingrafting, which is the
term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their
business to perform the operation every autumn in the month of
September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one
another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the
small-pox; they make parties for this purpose, and when they are
met, the old woman comes with a nut-shell full of the matter of
the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have
opened.
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