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My dearest remedy book keepers,
A propos of distempers, I am going to tell you
a thing, that will make you wish yourself here.The small-pox, so fatal,
and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention
of engrafting, which
is the term they give it. There is a set of old women, who make it
their business to perform the operation, every autumn, in the month
of September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one another
to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox; they
make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen
or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nut-shell full of
the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please
to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her, with
a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch)
and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of
her needle, and after that, binds up the little wound with a hollow
bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins. The Grecians
have commonly the superstition of opening one in the middle of the
forehead, one in each arm, and one on the breast, to mark the sign
of the Cross; but this has a very ill effect, all these wounds leaving
little scars, and is not done by those that are not superstitious,
who chuse to have them in the legs, or that part of the arm that is
concealed.
The children or young patients play together all the
rest of the day, and are in perfect health to the eighth. Then the
fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds two days, very
seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty or thirty in their
faces, which never mark, and in eight days time they are as well as
before their illness. Where they are wounded, there remains running
sores during the distemper, which I don't doubt is a great relief
to it. Every year, thousands undergo this operation, and the French
Ambassador says pleasantly that they take the small-pox here by way
of diversion , as they take the waters in other countries. There is
no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am
well satistfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to
try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take the pains
to bring this useful invention into fashion in England, and I should
not fail to write to some of our doctors very particualrly about it,
if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy
such a considerable branch of their revenue, for the good of mankind.
But that distemper is too beneficial to them, not to expose to all
their resentment, the hardy weight that should undertake to put an
end to it. Perhaps if I live to return, I may, however, have courage
to war with them. And perhaps you can help me make them listen by
printing this in your booklet. Thanks and Cheerio!!! (25)
The Divine Lady Mary
AND NOW:
A short debate over this
discovery by two learned chirurgeons...
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