Apropos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that will make
you wish yourself here. The smallpox, so fatal and so general amongst
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 smallpox; they
make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen
or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the
matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what vein you please to
have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer 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 in 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 [spots] 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 ambassador says, pleasantly, that they take the
smallpox 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 that I am well satisfied of the safety of this
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, etc., etc.