A Plain Account of the Inoculating of
the Smallpox by a Turkey Merchant

A Plain Account of the Inoculating of
the Smallpox by a Turkey° Merchant

Out of compassion to the numbers abused and deluded by the knavery and ignorance of physicians, I am determined to give a true account of the manner of inoculating the smallpox as it is practised at Constantinople with constant success, and without any ill consequence whatever. I shall sell no drugs, nor take no fees, could I persuade people of the safety and reasonableness of this easy operation. ’Tis no way my interest° (according to the common acceptation° of that word) to convince the world of their errors; that is, I shall get nothing by it but the private satisfaction of having done good to mankind, and I know nobody that reckons that satisfaction any part of their interest.

The matter° ought to be taken from a young person of a sound constitution° and the best sort of the smallpox, when it is turned of the height. The old nurse who is the general surgeon upon this occasion at Constantinople takes it in a nutshell, which holds enough to infect 50 people — contrary to the infamous° practice here, which is to fill the blood with such a quantity of that matter as often endangers the life, and never fails of making the distemper° more violent than it need to be. She opens the arms, and sometimes legs, with a small rip of a needle, and with the point of the same needle takes as much of the matter as will lie upon it, and mixes it with that drop of blood that follows the little incision.The wounds are bound up with a small nutshell over them, which is thrown off in 12 or 16 hours, and the inflammation appears, more or less, as the blood is more or less disposed° to receive the infection. From that time the patient is confined to a warm chamber and a low diet, being utterly forbid wine or flesh meat. The eruption generally appears the 7th or 8th day afterwards. They give no cordials° to heighten the fever and, leaving Nature to herself, never fail of the good success which generally follows a rational way of acting upon all occasions. And the murders that have been committed on two unfortunate persons that have died under this operation has been wholly occasioned by the preparatives° given by our learned physicians, of whom I have too good an opinion not to suppose they knew what they did by weakening bodies that were to go through a distemper. I am confirmed in this opinion by the unfair accounts that were given in the public papers of their deaths. I believe ’tis much to be doubted if purges,° or any violent method, ever brings the body into a moderate temper, which may always be done by a cool diet and regular hours. But as I am not of the College,° I will not pretend to dispute with those gentlemen concerning their general practice in other distempers; but they must give me leave° to tell them from my own knowledge, witnessed by every one of our Company that has ever resided at Constantinople, and several thousands of those there that have happily undergone this operation, that their long preparations only serve to destroy the strength of body necessary to throw off the infection. The miserable gashes that they give people in the arms may endanger the loss of them, and the vast quantity they throw in of that infectious matter may possibly give them the worst kind of smallpox, and the cordials that they pour down their throats may increase the fever to such a degree as may put an end to their lives. And after some few more sacrifices of this kind it may be hoped this terrible design° against the revenue of the College may be entirely defeated, and those worthy members receive two guineas° a day, as before, of the wretches that send for them in that distemper.

Since I writ this, I have read some queries, published in the St. James’s Evening Post, stated in a very unfair manner, most of the facts there mentioned being utterly false. However, I never will deny but ’tis in the power of a surgeon to make an ulcer° with the help of lancet° and plaster° and of a doctor to kill by prescriptions.