[61] Tracts on Inoculation, p. 126.
[62] Ibid. p. 107.
[63] Monro accounts for the excessive mortality of this year by the presence of regiments in Edinburgh after the suppression of the rebellion of 1745.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
INOCULATION ABROAD.
Before proceeding to relate how Inoculation was superseded and ultimately suppressed in England, it may be expedient to make some notes on the prevalence of the practice in other lands.
And first in New England where, as we have seen, Cotton Mather had precedence in subjecting the reports of eastern inoculation to the test of western practice. Mather and his coadjutor, Boylston, did not propose to make inoculation habitual, but to reserve it for use in epidemics. Sometimes years elapsed in New England without smallpox: there were no dense urban populations to constitute seats of zymotic disease: and to provide perpetually against what was occasional was obviously unnecessary. Nevertheless the colonists shared the common disposition of the time for pottering in remedies, and their slaves afforded convenient opportunities for experiments in which temerity had the sanction of beneficence. With the Whites, cleanliness, ventilation, drainage, and pure water, were conditions of accident rather than of providence, but with the Blacks life was that of the stye, and the consequences in smallpox were thought to be sufficiently accounted for by the assertion that Negroes were constitutionally pre-disposed to that disorder. Wherefore the Blacks from Boston to the Spanish Main were from time to time remorselessly inoculated, and all of them who afterwards escaped smallpox had their immunity ascribed to their inoculation.
Jonathan Edwards, the prince of Calvinistic divines, was killed by inoculation. There was an epidemic of smallpox in New Jersey, and, for security, Edwards was inoculated. The result was the generation of smallpox in a severe form, of which he died, 22nd March, 1758, in his 54th year. In search of a superfluous safety was he slain. A man of the age of Edwards had little to fear from smallpox; for the disease, in the vast majority, was an affection of the young, concerning which, as having attained middle life, Edwards might have maintained comparative indifference.
The colonists usually ascribed any outbreak of smallpox to importation by shipping from Europe, if not manifestly, then covertly; for, it was held that smallpox could never be evolved spontaneously. Great pains were therefore taken to isolate patients, and Boston and other sea-ports had hospitals erected on sites remote from habitation, from which a flag was displayed whenever occupied by the sick. A physician who visited an hospital was required to take off his wig, to change his shoes, and to put on a gown which hung from his neck to his ankles; and, when he came out, to wash his hands, and be fumigated with frankincense. In setting forth these precautions, Professor Waterhouse of Cambridge, Massachusetts, observed in a letter to Dr. Haygarth of Chester—