[875] loc. cit.
[876] Published under the initials J. C., M.D.
[877] De Peste dissertatio habita Apr. 17, 1721, cui accessit descriptio inoculationis Variolarum, a Gualt. Harris, Lond. 1721.
[878] Phil. Trans. XLIX. 104.
[879] Sloane, u. s., 1736.
[880] Jurin, Account of the Success of Inoculating the Smallpox. Annual reports from 1723 to 1726.
[881] Alexander Monro, primus, An Account of the Inoculation of the Smallpox in Scotland. Edin. 1765 (Reply to circular of queries issued by the dean and delegates of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris).
[882] Phil. Trans. 1722: papers by Perrot Williams, M.D. (p. 262), and Richard Wright (p. 267).
[883] Voyages du Sr. A. de la Motraye. Tome II. La Haye, 1727, Chap. III. p. 98. He saw Timoni at Constantinople on his return from the Caucasus. Timoni used “a three-edged surgeon’s needle,” which is more intelligible than three needles tied together. La Motraye’s travellers’ tales have not enjoyed the best credit. But this of the inoculation in Circassia has been made by Voltaire the sole basis of his spirited account of inoculation as the national practice of that country (Lettres sur les Anglais, Lettre XI. “Sur l’insertion de la petite-vérole,” 1727, reprinted as the article “Inoculation” in his Dict. Philosophique, 1764). There has never been a grosser instance of a myth constructed in cold blood. The fable does not need refutation because it is mere assertion, in the manner of a philosophe. But the British ambassador at Constantinople made inquiries concerning the alleged Georgian or “Circassian” practice in 1755, at the instance of Maty, the foreign secretary of the Royal Society (Phil. Trans. XLIX. 104). A Capuchin friar, “a grave sober man” who had returned shortly before from a sixteen years’ residence in Georgia and “gives an account of the virtues and vices, good and evil, of that country with plainness and candour,” solemnly declared to Mr Porter that he never heard of inoculation “at Akalsike, Imiritte or Tiflis,” and was persuaded that it had never been known in the Caucasus. It was impossible that either the public or private practice of inoculation could have been concealed from him, as he went in and out among the people practising physic. He had often attended them in the smallpox, which, he said, was unusually severe there. On the other hand La Motraye says: “I found the Circassians becoming more beautiful as we penetrated into the mountains. As I saw no one marked with the smallpox, it occurred to me to ask if they had any secret to protect them from the ravages which this enemy of beauty makes among all nations. They told me, Yes; and gave me to understand that it was inoculating, or communicating it to those whom they wished to preserve by taking the matter from one who had it and mixing the same with the blood at incisions which they made. On this I resolved to see the operation, if it were possible, and made inquiry in every village that we passed through if there was anyone about to have it done. I soon found an opportunity in a village named Degliad, where I heard that they were going to inoculate a young girl of four or five years old just as we were passing.” This was published fifteen years after, Timoni’s account being given in an Appendix.
[884] Travels, IV. 484. See also for Algiers, Lond. Med. Journ. XI. 141. In those cases there was no inoculation by puncture or otherwise.