write the Histories of the Small Pox and of the Vaccine, that by displaying to the Public the baneful effects of the one, and the benign consequences of the other, the value of your surpassing discovery might be justly estimated. Accept then of this work, with all its imperfections, as a proof, at least, of my zeal for your fame; and of my ardour for the success of an invention calculated to rescue from misery and death, not only a large proportion of those human beings who now exist, but also of those who shall see the light in succession, down to the most remote periods of time. THE CONTENT S. CHAPTER I. Various Opinions on the Origin of the Small Pox CHAPTER II. The earliest Accounts and Progress of the Small Page I 21 CHAPTER III. The Small Pox appears in Arabia, and follows the Track of the Saracens CHAPTER IV. The Diffusion of Small Pox through Europe and America CHAPTER V. The various Theories and Treatment of the Small 112 Page CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER XI. THE HISTORY OF THE SMALL POX. CHAP. I. VARIOUS OPINIONS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SMALL POX. INFECTIOUS diseases spring up in obscurity, INFI and extend indefinitely: but if opposed with judgment, they might, like empires, be controled; and would decline and fall. The Small Pox has past through the first stages, and is now sinking into the last. Yet some lovers of paradoxes have maintained, that this malady, and the Measles, with which it was at first confounded, were coeval with the human race; and were described under different names by Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, Ætius, and other antient medical writers. The last assertion was urged briefly, but positively B by Salmasius*: and after him, Johannes Hahn†, a laborious Dutchman accumulated many passages from the classics to prove it: he has not only quoted the medical writers, but he suspected that he saw in the comedies of Aristophanes, in the satires of Horace, and in the Institutions of Quintillian, allusions to persons pitted with the Small Pox. Every ugly visage appeared to him seamed with the scars of that distemper. Though this work was most satisfactorily refuted by Dr. Werlhoff + Physician to the Elector of Hanover, yet the opinion continues to be occasionally broached by certain scholars, who, in fact, are the libellers of the Greek and Roman authors; whose works are distinguished for perspicuity, the first quality in didactic compositions. Their descriptions of diseases, are so clear and correct, that they have always been recommended by men of taste as models for imitation. Would they have merited these commendations, if they had described a disease of such importance as the Small Pox, in language so obscure and equivocal, that only a few minute critics can find out what disease is meant? *Cl. Salmasii, de Annis Climacteric. Lug. 1648. Variol. Antiq. Autor. Johan. Hahn. Werlhoff. Disquis, Med. de Variol. et Anthrae. 1733 |