[34] Letter to Dr. Jurin. London, 1723.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Mr. Maitland’s Account of Inoculating the Smallpox Vindicated. London, 1722, p. 20.
[37] Letter to Dr. Jurin, p. 12.
[38] Jurin’s Yearly Account of Inoculation, p. 13.
[39] Letter to Mr. Maitland in Vindication of the Sermon against Inoculation. London, 1722.
[CHAPTER V.]
COLLAPSE OF INOCULATION.
We sometimes fetch from afar what is to be found at our own doors; and thus it was with inoculation. No sooner was the great Eastern preventive advertised than it was said—Why, it is nothing more than a practice common in Wales and the Highlands of Scotland! Perrot Williams, M.D., and Richard Wright, surgeon, of Haverfordwest, communicated to the Royal Society[40] that the people in Pembrokeshire had practised inoculation “time out of mind.” They either scraped the skin thin or pricked it with pins, and then rubbed in pus from a smallpox patient. This they called “buying the smallpox,” as it was customary to pay something for what was fancied to be “good matter.” The Welshmen gave the same account of the practice as the Turks—there was no danger, no mishaps, and certain security from smallpox. In Scotland it did not appear that the skin was scraped, but worsted threads saturated with pus were tied round the wrists of children to whom it was desired to communicate the disease.[41]