TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 18836, 1 June 1920, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

It is interesting at a moment when vaccination is becoming known as an actual fa-t to many people to look back upon the hi.-.tory of this means of combating smallpox. Tito forerunner of vaccination, inoculation, is undoubtedly of ancient origin, and although inoculation was practised its a protection against several forms of disease it seems to have originated with -mallpox. Dhanwantari. the. Vedic father of medicine and the earliest known Hindu physician who is supposed to have lived about 1509 8.C., is said to have practised inoculation for smallpox and it is even ~tated that tile ancient Hindus employed a \ •■ecine which they prepared by transmission of f.he smallpox virus through the cow. ri'T ml King quotes die following, which is staled to be translated from the writings Dhanwantari;— ‘Lake the fluid of the pock on the udder oi the cow or on the arm between the s.'ar.d ier and elbow of a human subject on the point of a lancet, and lance with it the anus he tween t lit; shoulders and elbows until the blood appears. Then, mixing this fluid with the blood, the fever of die smallpox will be produced. Hole, ell writing in 1757 gave sonic inI --re-ling details regarding the method of inoculation used by the Hindus, describing : a- ptocess by which the virus was intro-eui-ed into the subject. Although it has i'cni claimed that the Chinese were the hr t to employ inoculation that theory is doubted and there seems to be greater probability to tlie statements that it was introduced from India til tout. 200 B.C. It is h'-yon-i doubt, however, that the Chinese V, f: e employing inoeulation in the seven-i-ce.'h century. Francois Xavier d’Entre- <' ■■i l ■- . who was a Jesuit missionary in China, writing in 172(1, mentions that a physician who lived a century before that had writt'-n a treatise on the disease and !he- u■ i■ of inoculation. D’Entrerolles suggested that in the Chinese phrase for -mallpox inoculation chung-leou, meaning ■'ci.ung ’ lo mhv, “(eon” smallpox, the latter ward, which also meant “eating peas” was u-el on ii'-rmint of the similarity of the pustules to peas.

The actual period of the first outbreak of smallpox in Europe was probably about die latter pari of the sixth century, when it appears to have travelled west through AraO.a, Ethiopia and the neighbouring counin- -■ ' i;d to have hc'-n brought, to Egypt by Arab-.. It was apparently unknown to (he

"maent (.recks a.nd Homans before the -ixdi or the beginning of the seventh cent'liy. The Abyssinian army at tire siege of Mecca was sinuten by the disease in 509 < r 571 A.D., and Bishop Marius also rears to i't at about (ho same time. In si 19 A.D., according to another historian, • mallpox broke out after the sacking of Alexandria by the Arabs and spread cast and west. Tim Arabs are also stated to

have introduced it into Spain. In the eighth century it was known in Italy and later it penetrated into northern Europe. The earliest physician to describe smallpox ''■ as Ahr.io, a Christian priest of Egyptian lineage, who lived at Alexandria under Ileraehus (010-64! I and die next was George, physician to Almangar, who wrote book about (he disease and its symptoms in 795 A.1)., but die first complete treatise on smallpox was written by Rhazes about 920. It is from his work that the term variolar-, derived from a Hebrew word meaning a spot or speck, is obtained. Hence the Latin “varus” or “variola,” the Italian “vajolo,” the French “vends” and the English “smallpox.”

For the first allusion to smallpox in EngI 'ml one must go to an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of tlie tenth century, but Sydenham was the first great English physician to make a study of (he disease. Inoculation for smallpox seems to have entered Europe by way of Greece and Constantinople, though the Danes were practising it in the seventeenth century. Some fifty years later it was used in France hut in 1763 an outbreak of the disease was attributed to inoculation and the practice was prohibited by the Government. Eleven years later, however, there is evidence that Louis XVI., the young king of France, was inoculated. It was introduced into Germany by Maitland. who journeyed to Hanover to inocm late the Prince Frederick of Prussia, but it made small headway until 1708. The Neapolitans practised inoculation secretly from an early period, hut it became general in Rome in 1754 at the time of a smallpox epidemic there. Dr Dimsdale, a London practitioner, introduced it to Russia owing to tlie interest taken in the subject by the Empress Catherine 11. America first saw inoculation as a result of the efforts of Cottoft Mather in T721, but he was bitterly

attacked and his life at one time was in danger. Forty years later an outbreak of smallpox in Boston brought inoculation into favour, and a few years later it was in use in Mexico- Inoculation seems to have

occurred in Britain first in the year 1722, but before that Lady Wortley Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Court, had written to friends in England giving details of the practice in Constantinople and announcing that she had had her ton operated on. In 1721 her baby daughter, then three months old, was inoculated by Hr Maitland in England. In 1722 seven criminals in Newgate were pardoned because they submitted themselves to inoculation and in the same year the child) en oi th ■ Princess of Wales were treated. The death of the lion. William Spencer from the results of smallpox after inoculation gave the practice a setback and it was fiercely attacked by both physicians and clergymen. In 1746 an Inoculation Hospital was established in London and nine years inter one finds the Royal College of Physicians issuing a manifesto in favour of it.

At several places in Europe it was noticed that dairymaids who had contracted cowpox did not suffer from smallpox, and in 1769 Jobst Bose, a Government official in Germany, cal'ed attention to the fact. In 1774 a Dorset farmer named Benjamin Jofty inoculated his wife and three of his children with cowpox matter as a protection against smallpox and later he was honoured by the Jcnnerian Society as “the first person (known) that introduced the Cow Pox by inoculation, and who froui his great strength of mind, made the experiment from the cow on his wife and two sons in the year 1774.” Fix years after that inoculation Edward .Tenner took up the study of cowpox and in 1790 he conducted his first successful experiments demonstrating to his own satisfaction that it was possible by this means to fend off smallpox. Before long Jenner’s name was a household world in Europe. Napoleon in the days of I'.is bitterest animosity to Britain, acceded to a request from Jenner for the release of an Englishman who was a prisoner in his hands. The Emperor of Austria, the King of Fpain and the Empress of Russia sent him presents. In 1801 Jenner laid a petition before the Parliament in Ixmdon for a grant on the following grounds; First, that lie had discovered that cowpox was inoculablc from cow to man ; second, that persons so inoculated were for life perfectly secure from smallpox. He was granted £IO,OOO. Notwithstanding all these things there were still many who opposed vaccination and it was actually alleged by some that those inoculated with cowi>ox would assume bovine features. One writer recounted that

a lady had complained “that since her daughter was inoculated she coughed like a cow and has grown hairy over her body,” while others stated that vaccinated people

“Iwdlowed like hulls.” In ISOO, however, the House of Commons granted Jenner a further £20,000 as a reward for his great services. In estimating .Tenner’s great achievement, it should be remembered that his- discovery was not so much the fact that persons who had been infected with cowpox or aped variola, but that the matter taken from a human being suffering from cowpox had a power of protecting another individual from smallpox.