Notes suggested by the Franklin-Heberden pamphlet of 1759 / by Henry K. Cushing.

  • Cushing, Henry K. (Henry Kirke), 1827-1910.
Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes suggested by the Franklin-Heberden pamphlet of 1759 / by Henry K. Cushing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    operation is to be performed, the incisions dressed, the patient [2S2] treated, and on the appearance of what symptoms a Physician is to be called, &c, might, by encouraging parents to inoculate their own children, be a means of removing that objection of the expense, render the practice much more general, and thereby save the lives of thousands. The Doctor, after perusing and considering the above, humanely took the trouble (tho' his extensive practice affords him scarce any time to spare) of writing the following Plain Instructions, and generously at his own private expense, printed a very large impression of them, which was put into my hands to be distrib- uted gratis in America. Not aiming at the prize which however is justly due to such disinterested benevolence, he has omitted his name; but as I thought the advice of a nameless Physician might possibly on that account be less regarded I have, without his knowledge, here divulged it. And I have prefixed to his small but valuable work these pages, containing the facts that have given rise to it; because facts generally have, as indeed they ought to have, great weight in persuading to the practice they favour. To these I may also add an account I have been favoured with by Dr. Archer, physician to the Smallpox Hospital here, viz.: There have been inoculated in this Hospital since persons Its first institution to this day, Dec. 31, 1758... l 1601 Of which number died j 6 Patients who had the Small-pox in the common way in this Hospital, to the same day >3856 Of which number have died J1002 By this account it appears, that in the way of inoculation there has died but one patient in 267, whereas in the common way there has died more than one in four. The mortality indeed in the latter case appears to have been greater than usual, (one in seven, when the distemper is not very favourable, being reckoned the common loss in towns by the Small-pox, all ages and ranks taken together) but these patients were mostly adults, and were re- ceived, it is said, into the Hospital after great irregularities had been committed. By the Boston account it appears, that, Whites and Blacks taken together, but about one in eleven died in the common way, and the distemper then was therefore reckoned un- commonly favourable. I have also obtained from the Foundling Hospital (where all the children admitted, that had not had the Small-pox, are inoculated at the age five years) an account to To make them the plainer and more generally intelligible, the Doctor purposely avoided, as much as possible, the medical terms and expressions us'd by Physicians in their writings.