The patients are washed all over in soap suds, then rubbed with brandy, and lastly washed in vinegar; they put on fresh clothes, and bury those they wore during their stay in the hospital. But even then they are smoked and fumigated with sulphur in the smoke-house, which is about twice the size of a common sentry-box. This smoke-house has a hole in its side for the patient to put his head out of during the operation. Although this seems formidable on paper, yet patients submit cheerfully, and with no slight merriment.
There are perhaps 150 under inoculation at present at Sewell’s Point, not one of them paupers. They are principally children, perhaps thirty or forty of them of the first people in the commonwealth. The charge for the whole process is 8 dollars, or 36s. sterling, including every expense from incision to dismission. In some places they inoculate for half that sum. You must conceive the whole business conducted with a good deal of gaiety, where a patient, when ill, is as apt to be pitied as if sea-sick with a sailing party. The established system of mirth and good humour contributes not a little to the welfare of the patients.
It is a curious story, and stands in broad contrast to the rough and ready practice of Turkey, and of many inoculators in England and elsewhere. Dr. Waterhouse adds--
There were a considerable number of persons in Boston to whom smallpox could not be communicated by inoculation. In some the operation was repeated two, three, and four times with fresh matter. Several of these have had the disease severely since in the natural way, and some have died of it.
France was slow to accept inoculation. After its introduction in 1723, about thirty years elapsed without any serious movement in its favour, when Voltaire, Diderot, and their set began to recommend the practice, which had the merit of being English and disliked by those who held change and improvement in aversion. La Condamine read an eloquent paper on the advantages of inoculation before the Academy of Sciences; and Turgot, the ardent and sagacious lover of his kind, procured the inoculation of a child in Paris, 1st April, 1755; which was followed on 14th May by a young man, named Chastellux, submitting himself to the operation in the interest of the common welfare. Then Dr. Hosty was sent to London to investigate and report, and on his return issued these statements--