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182
1908]
The method of inoculation practised in Eastern Europe is described in one
of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters written from Adrianoplein 1717, and
as reference to it is frequently made by every writer on the History of Vaccination,
the greater part of the extract is here appended:—
"Apropos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that I
am sure will make you wish yourself here. 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
(commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell
full of the matter of the best kind of Small Pox, and asks what veins
you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to
her with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common
scratch) and puts into the vein as much venom as can lie upon the head
of her needle, and after binds up the wound with a hollow bit of shell;
and in this manner opens four of five veins. The Grecians have commonly
the superstition of opening one in the middle of the forehead, in each
arm, and on the breast, to mark the sign of the cross, but this has a
very ill effect, all these wounds leaving little scars, and is not done by
those that are not superstitious, who choose to have them in the legs, or
that part of the arm that is concealed. The children or young patients play
together the rest of the day, and are in perfect health to the eighth.
Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds two days,
very seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty or thirty in
their faces, which never mark; and in eight days 'time they are as well
as before their illness. Where they are wounded, there remain running
sores during the distemper, which I don't doubt is a great relief to it.
Every year thousands undergo this operation ; and the French Ambassador
says pleasantly that they take the Small Pox here by way of diversion,
as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any
one that has died in it; and you may believe I am well satisfied of the
safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son."
In a later letter to her husband she writes:—
" The boy was engrafted last Tuesday, and is at this time singing and
playing, and very impatient for his supper. I pray God my next may give
as good an account of him. . . I cannot engraft the girl; her nurse has
not had the Small Pox."