Thomas Dimsdale - Thoughts on General and Partial Inoculations

A short estimate of the number of those who die of the natural Small Pox, with a view to demonstrate the advantages that may accrue to Russia, from the practice of inoculation.

It is needless to expatiate upon the havock which the Small Pox makes in most parts of the known world: probably there is not a country, city, or smaller community, which has not experienced its devastations in its turn. The very idea of it is insupportable; but its real effects, in places unapprised and unacquainted with the proper treatment and remedies against it, are not less general and fatal than the plague itself.

Though this fact is generally allowed, yet many, I think, are ignorant of the immense loss mankind sustains by this distemper. It may not be amiss therefore to shew, from well attested accounts, the proportion of persons who die of the natural Small Pox: for which purpose it will be necessary to chuse some country or city where an exact register of the births and deaths, as well as an accurate list of diseases, is regularly kept.

Dr. Jurin, secretary to the Royal Society in London, carried this into execution in 1722, soon after Inoculation had been introduced into England, being desirous of shewing the different effects of the natural and inoculated Small Pox.

I shall not here insert all that was published by this ingenious author, as the whole may be found in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, under № 374. The following extract will be sufficient for my present purpose.

The Doctor for forty-two years selected from the Bills of Mortality in London, such as died there of the Small Pox and other distempers. His observation may appear perhaps somewhat extraordinary: nevertheless he makes it plain, that out of 1000 infants, 386 die under two years of age, which is considerably more than one third. He then deducts such as he supposes die of the diseases natural to infancy; and afterwards proceeds to demonstrate, that if the whole bulk of mankind be taken at the age of two years, the eighth part will die of the natural Small Pox; and that of such as have it in the natural way, one in five or six dies.

With respect to my own calculations on this subject, I endeavoured to find out whether the Small Pox proved equally fatal after the time mentioned by the Doctor. With this view, before I left England, I procured the Bills of Mortality of the City of London for the last thirty-four years, excepting two, which could not be found. Of these I made a table, which I have added at the end of this treatise. I was surprized to find the number for these thirty-two years past tally so exactly with the observations made by Dr. Jurin.

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To enumerate the instances that have happened within my own knowledge to confirm this assertion, would be almost endless; I shall only mention a few that are remarkable.

I was desired to visit a young woman about ten miles distant; I found her dying from the inoculation of a man, who, upon the credit of having been my coachman, had set up inoculator: he was gone on the pretence of procuring my assistance, but in fact had ran away; this was his thirteenth patient.

Another illiterate person in my neighbourhood began the practice; but a child he had inoculated happening to have a fit, he was so frighted as to elope till he was informed that his patient was out of danger.

I received a letter from a poor man who kept a school about eight miles from Hertford, to inform me, that not being able to pay a proper person, he had ventured to inoculate his own family himself, and begging a visit on account of one of his children who he feared was in danger: I complied with his request, and found one child dying of a confluent pock; but my compassion abated, on finding his house filled with some poor neighbours from whom he received a small gratuity for their inoculation, one of which had lost an eye under his care. This man’s residence was in a small town, and from his patients several caught the Small Pox, and some died.

I saw a poor woman dying of a confluent disease; her husband had raised money for his own inoculation, and having had the disease favourably, was assured by a farmer who inoculated him, that he might safely go home to his family. The wife died, leaving five children, who all had the disease and recovered.

At a village not far from Hertford, the same farmer inoculated as many of the parish as could raise five shillings and three-pence, informing the others that the Small Pox was not catching from the inoculated; but the whole neighbourhood became infected, and several died.