[993] Mr Maitland’s Account of Inoculating the Smallpox vindicated. 2nd ed. Lond. 1722.
[994] Phil. Trans. XXXIII. 379. “A short account of the Anomalous Epidemic Smallpox beginning at Plymouth in August, 1724, and continuing to the month of June, 1725, By the learned and ingenious Dr Huxham, physician at Plymouth.”
[995] The totals are given in Jurin’s Account for 1725. The ages are in the original communication of the Rev. Mr Wasse, among the MS. papers which Jurin had deposited with the Royal Society.
[996] The most singular thing in the Aynho experience is that there should have been no cases in infants under two years. It was observed, however, some two generations after this, that smallpox attacked children at the earliest ages in the great towns (Haygarth, Sketch of a Plan, &c., 1793, p. 31), and even in the worst conditions of infancy it has attacked relatively few in the first three months of life. Again, it is nearly as remarkable that there should have been only three cases at Aynho in the third year of life and only four in the fourth. However, the fewness of cases in the five first years of life must be taken as exceptional, even for a village epidemic. If Nettleton, who made the first of these censuses of smallpox epidemics and suggested to Jurin that they should be carried out elsewhere, had given the ages, he would certainly have included some in infancy, for he mentions, in the course of his inoculation experiences, particular cases at nine months, eighteen months, etc.
[997] Frewen, Phil. Trans. XXXVII. 108.
[998] See above, pp. 485-6 and 490-1.
[999] Deering, Nottingham vetus et nova. 1751, pp. 78, 82. He says, in an essay on smallpox (Improved Method of treating Smallpox. Nottingham, 1737) that he treated fifty-one cases in the epidemic of 1736, of which only three proved fatal.
[1000] Gent. Magaz. 1741, p. 704.
[1001] Alex. Monro, primus, in his Report to the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris on Inoculation in Scotland, 1765. Reprinted in his Works. Edin. 1781, p. 485. He does not give ages, but an inspection of the burial registers is said to show that they were nearly all under five.
[1002] Gent. Magaz. 1742, p. 704. Blomefield gives 1710 and 1731 as great smallpox years in Norwich.