The history of inoculation and vaccination for the prevention and treatment of disease : lecture memoranda, American Medical Association, Minneapolis, 1913 / [foreword by] Henry S. Wellcome.

Date:
[1913?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The history of inoculation and vaccination for the prevention and treatment of disease : lecture memoranda, American Medical Association, Minneapolis, 1913 / [foreword by] Henry S. Wellcome. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/322
    ra 10 lllftTORT <tl' |S<»C»J.1LAriON ANH VACCtNATlON ^ Frum acc^untP recorded by explorers, there is evidence that inoculation in some form has been practised .irnong savii^je tribes and barbaric peoples in various parts of the world, from an unknown period. It is probable that the custom liad its birth in India and Um? Far Eiist, and thence spread westward to Africa and Hurope. . Colonel Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese traveller, found J in 1877 that certain races in North-east Africa practised a form of inoculation against the bites of poisonous snakes. He states that they mix the ^ ^enom of serpcnts with certain vege- poUoniov table juices, and rub the brown paste so formed into incisions. in the skin of the ai*m. He was thus iiroculated - himself, and states that the operation w'as followed by pain and swelling, but it seeme^d to “be effective aud to produce an immunity to certain poisons, as he was afterw.ards 1 bitten bv a M'noinons snake without any after-effects. ' ' ^ The bush negroes in' Surinam also-are said to practises a siinilar method' of inoculation to protect themselves against the bites of poisonous ^snakes. .7.. '■ _ i Bruce, in his ** Voyage to the Sources of the Nile,” 1700, says he found that inoculation as a protection ' against smallpox had been practised in Nubia from » time immemorial by the tiegresses, the Arab-,women, Nubians, Shillooks, and other native tribes. The operation was called by them and or, as among other African nations, “ buying the smallpox.” The method was by contact. .\ woman would bind a piece of cotton material round the arm of someone 1 sjiffering from small|>ox, which, when impregnated with the virus, she would apply to the arm of her child, i Jtruce stales that “ nobody wms known either in Sennaar ^ • .Abyssinia who had had sntallpox more th.ui once.” c . * Mlutlon -as a preventive of smallpox was known • h-vtlecs, and Bowditch states that a method