_Ingrafting for small-pox_
Adrianople, 1 _April_, O.S. [1717].
In my opinion, dear S., I ought rather to quarrel with you for not
answering my Nimeguen letter of August till December, than to excuse
my not writing again till now. I am sure there is on my side a very
good excuse for silence, having gone such tiresome land-journeys,
though I don't find the conclusion of them so bad as you seem to
imagine. I am very easy here, and not in the solitude you fancy me.
The great number of Greek, French, English, and Italians, that are
under our protection, make their court to me from morning till night;
and, I'll assure you, are many of them very fine ladies; for there is
no possibility for a Christian to live easily under this government
but by the protection of an embassador--and the richer they are, the
greater their danger.
Those dreadful stories you have heard of the plague have very little
foundation in truth. I own I have much ado to reconcile myself to the
sound of a word which has always given me such terrible ideas, though
I am convinced there is little more in it than a fever. As a proof we
passed through two or three towns most violently infected. In the
very next house where we lay (in one of them) two persons died of it.
Luckily for me, I knew nothing of the matter; and I was made believe,
that our second cook who fell ill here, had only a great cold.
However, we left our doctor to take care of him, and yesterday they
both arrived here in good health; and now I am let into the secret
that he has had the _plague_. There are many that escape it; neither
is the air ever infected. I am persuaded that it would be as easy to
root it out here as out of Italy and France; but it does so little
mischief, they are not very solicitous about it, and are content to
suffer this distemper instead of our variety, which they are utterly
unacquainted with.
_A propos_ of distempers: I am going to tell you a thing that I am
sure will make you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal and
so general among us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of
_ingrafting_, 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 veins 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 venom 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, in each
arm, and 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 choose 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 remain 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 embassador 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 very well satisfied of the safety of the
experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son.
I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into
fashion in England; and I should not fail to write to some of our
doctors very particularly 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
wight that should undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps, if I live
to return, I may, however, have courage to war with them. Upon this
occasion admire the heroism in the heart of your friend.