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 1723would 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.
