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One effect of the introduction] of vaccination was a very
great decrease in the practice of inoculation, which had become
very prevalent during the later part of the previous century.
And the view has been put forward that, the prevalence of
inoculation having greatly increased the amount of Small.Pox,
the diminution of Small.Pox in question was the result of the
decrease of inoculation.
The practice of inoculation for the Small.Pox, that is, the
artificial introduction of the virus into the system by the insertion
of fluid from a variolous pustule into wounds of the skin made
for the purpose, began definitely in England towards the end of
the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Attention was
directed to the latter by letters from Timoni, of Athens (dated
1713), and Pylarini, published in the twenty.ninth volume of the
' Philosophical Transactions ' (1716), and especially by a letter
from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1717. Though there are
indications that in Great Britain and Ireland, as in other
countries, some sort of inoculation had occasionally been
practised at a much earlier date, the first clearly recorded case
in England is that of the daughter of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu (whose son had sometime before been inoculated at
Constantinople), inoculated by Maitland, in London, in April,
1721. Other cases soon followed in England, and about the
same time the practice was also introduced in other countries of
Western Europe, and into the United States of America, namely,
at Boston.
It was found that the attacks induced by inoculation were,
as a rule, milder and very much less fatal than the attacks of the
' natural' disease, the fever and constitutional disturbance being
less and of shorter duration, and the eruptive pustules much
fewer ; the number of these varied, being commonly a dozen or
two, sometimes only two or three, sometimes a hundred or more.
In some cases there was no eruption at all, the effect being limited
to constitutional disturbances and to changes in the wounds of
inoculation themselves ; it was maintained that in such cases the