It is inadvertently affirmed in the Christian countries of Europe that
the English are fools and madmen. Fools, because they give their
children the small-pox to prevent their catching it; and madmen, because
they wantonly communicate a certain and dreadful distemper to their
children, merely to prevent an uncertain evil. The English, on the other
side, call the rest of the Europeans cowardly and unnatural. Cowardly,
because they are afraid of putting their children to a little pain;
unnatural, because they expose them to die one time or other of the small-
pox. But that the reader may be able to judge whether the English or
those who differ from them in opinion are in the right, here follows the
history of the famed inoculation, which is mentioned with so much dread
in France.
The Circassian women have, from time immemorial, communicated the small-
pox to their children when not above six months old by making an incision
in the arm, and by putting into this incision a pustule, taken carefully
from the body of another child. This pustule produces the same effect in
the arm it is laid in as yeast in a piece of dough; it ferments, and
diffuses through the whole mass of blood the qualities with which it is
impregnated. The pustules of the child in whom the artificial small-pox
has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper
to others. There is an almost perpetual circulation of it in Circassia;
and when unhappily the small-pox has quite left the country, the
inhabitants of it are in as great trouble and perplexity as other nations
when their harvest has fallen short.
The circumstance that introduced a custom in Circassia, which appears so
singular to others, is nevertheless a cause common to all nations, I mean
maternal tenderness and interest.
The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and indeed,
it is in them they chiefly trade. They furnish with beauties the
seraglios of the Turkish Sultan, of the Persian Sophy, and of all those
who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious
merchandise. These maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed
to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and
effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the
pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. These
unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their mothers, in the same
manner as little girls among us repeat their catechism without
understanding one word they say.
Now it often happened that, after a father and mother had taken the
utmost care of the education of their children, they were frustrated of
all their hopes in an instant. The small-pox getting into the family,
one daughter died of it, another lost an eye, a third had a great nose at
her recovery, and the unhappy parents were completely ruined. Even,
frequently, when the small-pox became epidemical, trade was suspended for
several years, which thinned very considerably the seraglios of Persia
and Turkey.
A trading nation is always watchful over its own interests, and grasps at
every discovery that may be of advantage to its commerce. The
Circassians observed that scarce one person in a thousand was ever
attacked by a small-pox of a violent kind. That some, indeed, had this
distemper very favourably three or four times, but never twice so as to
prove fatal; in a word, that no one ever had it in a violent degree twice
in his life. They observed farther, that when the small-pox is of the
milder sort, and the pustules have only a tender, delicate skin to break
through, they never leave the least scar in the face. From these natural
observations they concluded, that in case an infant of six months or a
year old should have a milder sort of small-pox, he would not die of it,
would not be marked, nor be ever afflicted with it again.
In order, therefore, to preserve the life and beauty of their children,
the only thing remaining was to give them the small-pox in their infant
years. This they did by inoculating in the body of a child a pustule
taken from the most regular and at the same time the most favourable sort
of small-pox that could be procured.
The experiment could not possibly fail. The Turks, who are people of
good sense, soon adopted this custom, insomuch that at this time there is
not a bassa in Constantinople but communicates the small-pox to his
children of both sexes immediately upon their being weaned.
Some pretend that the Circassians borrowed this custom anciently from the
Arabians; but we shall leave the clearing up of this point of history to
some learned Benedictine, who will not fail to compile a great many
folios on this subject, with the several proofs or authorities. All I
have to say upon it is that, in the beginning of the reign of King George
I., the Lady Wortley Montague, a woman of as fine a genius, and endued
with as great a strength of mind, as any of her sex in the British
Kingdoms, being with her husband, who was ambassador at the Porte, made
no scruple to communicate the small-pox to an infant of which she was
delivered in Constantinople. The chaplain represented to his lady, but
to no purpose, that this was an unchristian operation, and therefore that
it could succeed with none but infidels. However, it had the most happy
effect upon the son of the Lady Wortley Montague, who, at her return to
England, communicated the experiment to the Princess of Wales, now Queen
of England. It must be confessed that this princess, abstracted from her
crown and titles, was born to encourage the whole circle of arts, and to
do good to mankind. She appears as an amiable philosopher on the throne,
having never let slip one opportunity of improving the great talents she
received from Nature, nor of exerting her beneficence. It is she who,
being informed that a daughter of Milton was living, but in miserable
circumstances, immediately sent her a considerable present. It is she
who protects the learned Father Courayer. It is she who condescended to
attempt a reconciliation between Dr. Clark and Mr. Leibnitz. The moment
this princess heard of inoculation, she caused an experiment of it to be
made on four criminals sentenced to die, and by that means preserved
their lives doubly; for she not only saved them from the gallows, but by
means of this artificial small-pox prevented their ever having that
distemper in a natural way, with which they would very probably have been
attacked one time or other, and might have died of in a more advanced
age.
The princess being assured of the usefulness of this operation, caused
her own children to be inoculated. A great part of the kingdom followed
her example, and since that time ten thousand children, at least, of
persons of condition owe in this manner their lives to her Majesty and to
the Lady Wortley Montague; and as many of the fair sex are obliged to
them for their beauty.
Upon a general calculation, threescore persons in every hundred have the
small-pox. Of these threescore, twenty die of it in the most favourable
season of life, and as many more wear the disagreeable remains of it in
their faces so long as they live. Thus, a fifth part of mankind either
die or are disfigured by this distemper. But it does not prove fatal to
so much as one among those who are inoculated in Turkey or in England,
unless the patient be infirm, or would have died had not the experiment
been made upon him. Besides, no one is disfigured, no one has the small-
pox a second time, if the inoculation was perfect. It is therefore
certain, that had the lady of some French ambassador brought this secret
from Constantinople to Paris, the nation would have been for ever obliged
to her. Then the Duke de Villequier, father to the Duke d'Aumont, who
enjoys the most vigorous constitution, and is the healthiest man in
France, would not have been cut off in the flower of his age.
The Prince of Soubise, happy in the finest flush of health, would not
have been snatched away at five-and-twenty, nor the Dauphin, grandfather
to Louis XV., have been laid in his grave in his fiftieth year. Twenty
thousand persons whom the small-pox swept away at Paris in 1723 would
have been alive at this time. But are not the French fond of life, and
is beauty so inconsiderable an advantage as to be disregarded by the
ladies? It must be confessed that we are an odd kind of people. Perhaps
our nation will imitate ten years hence this practice of the English, if
the clergy and the physicians will but give them leave to do it; or
possibly our countrymen may introduce inoculation three months hence in
France out of mere whim, in case the English should discontinue it
through fickleness.
I am informed that the Chinese have practised inoculation these hundred
years, a circumstance that argues very much in its favour, since they are
thought to be the wisest and best governed people in the world. The
Chinese, indeed, do not communicate this distemper by inoculation, but at
the nose, in the same manner as we take snuff. This is a more agreeable
way, but then it produces the like effects; and proves at the same time
that had inoculation been practised in France it would have saved the
lives of thousands.