London Vaccine Institution, for inoculating and supplying matter free of expense : patronized by the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and Common Council, of the City of London, established in 1806, and supported by voluntary contributions.

London Vaccine Institution.

Date:: 1813

Credit: London Vaccine Institution, for inoculating and supplying matter free of expense : patronized by the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and Common Council, of the City of London, established in 1806, and supported by voluntary contributions. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$possible, the doleful picture, the putrid carcases \veic dragged forth from tlie huts by the wolves, with a furious voracity ; or mangled within them by the dogs, whose hunger w as satistied w'ith the disfigured remains of (lieir masters. Since that time, the contagion has spread among other distant tribes, and conti- nued to produce most desolating ellects. The population of the extensive wilds of North America seems’thus to have been threatened with more destructive attacks than it has yet felt by the deadly present of spirituous liquors from tfie ’•Whites, which has already made greater havoc among the Indians, than ifire- arms or the sword. The tracing of the origin of that disease which has desolated, from age to age, so many dilferent regions in every quarter of the world, to the siege of Mecca, in the preceding extracts, (page 13,) does not convey to us any idea on the nature of its source. The visitation of smalkpox and measles on the besieg- ing army of the African Christians, when threatening to destroy the Caaba or temple of the Heathen Koreish, and their con- sequent discomfiture, has been ascribed by these to a iniraclej or special interference of the gods. Maracci, an Italian eccle- siastic, editor of the Koran published at Padua in 1798, with a jealous zeal for the honour of Christianity, boldly ascribes it to an impious stratagem of the devil. He also extorts fi>om the Mahometans the confession, that God would not have defended, against the Christians, the idols of the Caaba. Respecting the origin of any disease, existing, in dillerent quarters and different ages of the world, whence its dilfusioii may have been more or less rapid and general, from circum- stances apparently incidental or fortuitous, it seems probable that it may, in many instances, have arisen t/c novu, or indepen- dently of contagion from the disease already established *. VV'hen it is cousiderod how little communication distant nations had with * To attempt to examine the cause of the insusecpiibility in man of (l»e renew.'il, or of a second aMack or of reiterated attacks, of certain diseases, as of tlte siiiall-pox, chii ken-pox., measles, &c. would be a vain attempt. We cannot c mprehend the sceret acd silent laws of animal pbjsiology, by which these “ ills which flesh is heir to,” is reguLitcd. I’cihaps, as in the recovery from every description of disease, there may be said to have$